Boxing superstar, Manny Pacquiao and former Mr. Olympia, Arnold Swarzenegger readily come to mind when you think of standout athletes who have been successful in the political arena.
In a few years, 2018 Triple Jump gold medalist, Troy Doris may be another.
The Chicago, Illinois, USA based athlete stated in a recent interview that during the pandemic, he had quite some time to reflect on how he can further impact change in his community and decided to run as a Trustee Candidate.
Doris, who still has a goal of earning a medal at the Tokyo, Japan Olympic Games this summer, disclosed that getting into politics has made him even more productive and structured with his training regimen.
“Taking on this new chapter hasn’t really been any hindrance to my training or my track career” said the 31-year-old.
In fact, he added “It has actually made me a bit more productive because I have some better structure now. With the pandemic, everybody was just at a standstill so, so far it has been really good. This is my first shot at politics and campaigning even though I come from an educational background with Political Science but I think it is going to be interesting to see a new realm of competitiveness in a different atmosphere.”
Doris will be a candidate for Village Trustee for the First Party of Bolingbrook in their version of local government elections on April 6.
“I am excited to be running in my community and making meaningful changes and decisions and really helping our people that are in need in our community. So this is something that is pretty authentic to me and I think I will be able to navigate pretty natural through this whole process.
Doris, who placed seventh at the Rio Games in 2016, admitted that there will be challenges but looks forward to focusing on it more heavily after retirement.
“There will be challenges but it’s something that I will be interested in for a long time, especially knowing that I can’t do track forever. I will get to a point where there is the cap in the age bracket so being able to set something up with politics after my Track and Field career is something that is very interesting to me and is something I want to continue doing in the future.”
In the meantime, Doris has adjusted his training during the cold winter in the Midwest during the pandemic.
“Training at this point for me and for pretty much everyone has been halted unless you are fortunate enough to live in a warm climate area in the States. I am very limited with what I can do but I have been very fortunate to set up a nice little home gym in my basement and really just continue the progress of competing at the Olympics.”
He added “One really good mentality that my coach has that has grown on me is to keep things simple. So adjusting to the pandemic and to training has been pretty easy because not to say that we put minimal effort into training but we do things very specific and we with a purpose and it doesn’t take up too much time.”
He concluded “They are not consuming training sessions per se so the adjustment was easy. I created creative alternatives to what I am used to and so far it has been working well. Would I like to be back on the track? of course, but as for now the adjustment is better than any other alternative I can think about at the moment. I still can do what I can to keep progressing to achieve coming this summer.”
This story was first reported by NCN.
