The American almost joined Microsoft before her journey led to back-to-back Olympic gold medals in Tokyo and Paris
On the night she became the Olympic discus champion in Tokyo, Valarie Allman processed the biggest moment of her career by eating pizza, alone, in the athletes’ village of the spectator-free Games.
"I don't even know if you can call that a celebration. I mean, I love pizza. It was what it was," Valarie Allman said.
Three years later, after retaining her Olympic title in Paris in front of a sold-out Stade de France crowd, she left to celebrate, for real, surrounded by family.
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"We got burgers at 2am. It's being able to lean into the moment that has felt like the ultimate celebration.”
Two golds marked by two, quite different, celebrations. And to think, neither would have happened had Allman taken a job offer at Microsoft. As track and field looks ahead to 2025, Allman remains as accomplished as anyone in her discipline.
The US athlete’s personal best of 71.46m places her 16th on the world all-time list and is the second-farthest mark of the past 32 years. It is a remarkable career – one that almost never began.
Her career in discus came almost by accident. As a high school freshman in Colorado, she picked up the implement only because she wanted to attend her team's annual spaghetti dinner that was open to throwers. She was such a quick study in the event that by 2016, she ended her junior year at Stanford with collegiate All-American honours.
That summer, she began an internship at Microsoft, where she had access to the software giant’s "product realisation lab,” a shop where engineers and designers could bring designs to life.
For Allman, who was studying to work in hardware engineering and product design, the experience felt like a dream. But the reality that working on huge projects would often require taking on one, narrow role "made me realise that maybe within tech, or within hardware, my passion would actually look a little bit different,” she said.
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Allman felt equally unsure about the viability of a professional career as she returned to Stanford for her final year of eligibility.
That year, a new throws coach arrived at Stanford named Zebulon Sion who was convinced she possessed world-class potential. Qualifying for the 2017 World Championships in London after their first season working together confirmed her coach’s instincts had been correct, she said, and boosted her confidence that she could hold her own against pros.
"I realised at that moment that I wanted to bridge that gap and be able to compete with them,” she said.
That desire was soon put to the test when Microsoft offered her a full-time position to return to the company. "I came to a ‘Y’ in the road of, do I go to Microsoft? Or do I pursue this crazy dream of trying to become a professional athlete and make the Olympics?” she said.
"I realised there’s only one time in your life that you can go after these athletic things.” Had she accepted the job offer, "that would one million percent have been the end of my throwing career,” Allman said.
By 2018, she was a US champion. In 2020, she broke Gia Lewis-Smallwood’s six-year-old US record. By following her golden triumph in Tokyo with another gold medal in Paris, Allman became only the third woman to win the discus in consecutive Olympics.
On her most frustrating training days, Allman still thinks about the career crossroads she faced when choosing between discus and tech; it puts in perspective whatever issue she is working through, reminding her of the privilege of her current career. Later in life, Allman still wants to find an opportunity to use her Stanford degree in product design.
Until then, she will continue to extend a golden career in the ring she once never thought was possible. "The biggest thing I feel grateful for is just finding the right people at the right time that believed in me,” she said, "that saw potential in me and kept this journey going way longer, way farther than I ever expected I would.”
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