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How Olympic & Paralympic Team USA Travels the World

As a professional athlete, a lot of travel is involved when representing your country. Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics, Team USA is here to talk about everything travel, from their dream destinations to their weirdest airport habits.

Released on 07/25/2024

Transcript

Hi, I'm Suni Lee and I do gymnastics.

Hey, what's up.

This is B-boy Victor and I'm competing in breaking.

Shot putter for Team USA.

I'm a sailor for the United States.

Diver for Team USA,

Team USA track and field.

And this is how I travel.

Here's how I travel.

Here's how I travel.

This is how I travel.

[3x3 Team] This is how we travel.

[upbeat music]

The coolest place I've ever traveled for my sport

has to be Tokyo, Japan.

Japan.

Probably Japan.

Japan has been one of my favorite spots to visit.

Love the country, I love the culture, super clean.

The people are so friendly and they also love volleyball,

which is an added plus.

The coolest place I've ever traveled for my sport

has to be Australia.

Sydney, Australia. Sydney, Australia.

Auckland, New Zealand.

Switzerland.

Italy.

Kazakhstan.

Monaco.

Portugal.

France. Kenya.

Rio De Janeiro.

Seoul, South Korea.

Hong Kong or Prague or Vienna.

Just a lot of cool cities that we get to go to.

In 2015 we raced the World Rowing Championships

in [indistinct] France.

Beautiful lake.

It's one of the clearest lakes in Europe, apparently,

haven't been to them all, but so they say.

Kind of a snow globe almost of mountains

that surround you at the start line.

Locals who were at the beach

or just checking around would carry water bottles out

into the lake and fill the water bottle up

just to drink from.

Never been anywhere else like that.

[upbeat music]

An item I never trouble without are definitely a good set

of headphones.

Headphones.

Headphones, I legit have 'em in my pocket right now.

Noise canceling headphones.

A box of earplugs usually used for like shooting

to protect your hearing.

But my coach snores like you wouldn't believe.

Just some street clothes.

You know, we do so much rowing

and training, but in the evenings we do get

to go walk around, see some restaurants

or just if we're in Europe,

enjoy some cobbled little side streets

and it's fun to just have your favorite outfit

so you can feel like a normal girl enjoying an evening.

My lucky sports bra [laughs].

I have a small scarab

that I got my first time in Egypt competing

and it now lives in my backpack

and I refuse to travel without it.

I'm actually tasked with carrying

around our teamwork rock.

It literally has magical powers.

It's, yeah, it's good.

My elementary school wristband for good luck.

I never travel without my sketchbook,

so when I'm on a plane or before a race,

I always have to be sketching.

My stuffed animal leopard named Simba.

Has to be all the snacks I bring with me.

As much food as I will need for the entire trip,

anywhere I go.

I love to bring beef jerky with me everywhere I go.

For me, it's always really strange

'cause I have to bring my hoop and my hoop is really large

and so I usually try to have it as a carry-on.

People ask me if it's a bicycle tire, a trampoline.

I've gotten asked if it's a satellite dish before,

which sure.

[upbeat music]

My strangest airport habit is probably that I need

to make sure that the gate that I'm going to exists.

Exists. Exists.

Exists and then I'm gonna go grab food.

Like my gate's gonna move,

like the gate is gonna get up and walk away.

You'll probably find a lot of rowers stretching.

The sport itself requires a lot of mobility.

You'll find me in pigeon on the floor of the gate carpet.

Not that strange for me, but I skate

to the airport all the time.

I don't know if it's my strangest,

but I think my worst airport habit

is that I have so many bags.

I came here with five bags.

It's ridiculous.

When I check in and we get to a gate, I'll find a seat

that has an outlet and if my outlet works, I'll go down

and see how many outlets work until they don't work.

I'm a nervous flyer.

I gotta get to the airport early.

I like to time it perfectly

so I'm not waiting in the airport at all.

The minute I get to an airport, I'm immediately sleepy

so I can just ball up in any way and fall asleep.

And one time it was during Christmas time,

I missed my flight.

I woke up and the plane was gone.

So, strange and not handy.

[upbeat music]

I really wanna go to Thailand and Dubai,

Bali. Bali.

Portugal. Portugal.

Greece.

Japan. Denmark.

Columbia. Thailand.

Croatia with some friends.

Nice, yeah, we'll just be going south of France.

Back to Hawaii.

When the Olympics are over, I want

to be on a beach somewhere.

Maybe somewhere tropical.

Cocktail with an umbrella in the glass.

Maybe get a little tan going.

Toes in the sand.

As long as it's good water.

Maybe the Exumas, maybe The Bahamas, maybe Turks and Caicos.

I don't wanna travel too far.

I'd love to go back and eat more food

and drink more coffee in Italy when the Olympics are over.

Mexico City, so I can eat all of the things.

Thailand for vacation.

I want to be there for about two months,

learn some Muay Thai.

Kinda wanna come back to New York

and actually just chill and enjoy it for a second.

I really like Lord of the Rings

and it would be really, really cool to go to New Zealand.

I'm actually going on my honeymoon directly

after the Olympics to Greece.

Probably out to Wyoming to do some hiking.

I was just watching The Bachelor season,

like an older season and they went to St. Lucia or something

in the Caribbean, which has mountains and stuff.

All natural things.

I wanna be out in nature and see some of the natural parks.

French Alps, some of the Italian Alps

and see as much of that part of Europe by bike

as my legs will let me.

Still kayaking, but just on more natural rivers,

maybe somewhere in South America would be really cool.

The vacation I want to take

after the Paralympics are over is straight to my bed.

[upbeat music]

I'm a window seat person so I can sleep.

Team window seat.

Definitely a window.

Definitely a window seat girl.

I'm an aisle seat guy.

Aisle seat person.

Aisle seat every time.

I'm super aisle seat.

Always the window.

Long hauls I prefer the aisle seat

because I like to be able to get up

and stretch out a little bit.

Shorter flights, I prefer the aisle

so I can get up and get out.

Aisle because I have to pee a lot

and I don't like making people get up.

I get nervous when people ask to use the restroom.

I get a little grumpy.

It's ugly like let me just sleep.

I'm either, I can do middle, aisle or window.

Never the middle.

I'll take a window or a aisle.

It doesn't, I'm not picky.

But preferably business class.

[upbeat music]

How do I handle jet lag, um.

Not well.

I don't [laughs].

I do try to mealtime a little bit

to make sure my body's relatively prepared

and then I usually just end up falling asleep

and ruining my entire plan.

Sleeping.

I sleep all the time so jet lag is legit my life.

I think I take three naps throughout the day.

Take some melatonin.

Take a melatonin, clock out.

Take some melatonin.

Listen to ASMR.

I sleep a lot.

I sleep an obscene amount once I get to my destination.

Grind right through it, it's pretty terrible.

But if you succumb to how terrible it is,

you can usually just stay up for a few more hours.

Hydration, nutrition, sleep, and sun.

Lots of coffee.

I think jet lag is a mindset.

I don't even know what jet lag is anymore.

We're all over the place.

I don't even know what time zone I'm in half the time.

I don't even know if my body even really

feels jet lag anymore.

I think I just pretty much almost instantly adjust.

I'm in charge of my jet lag.

The jet lag does not control me.

The trick to dealing with jet lag

is to get on the time destination

of where you're going before you travel.

We will actually start adjusting our sleep schedule

before we travel to Europe.

So if we can wake up an hour earlier, an hour earlier.

In the Tokyo Games, I was actually

sleeping on Tokyo time a few days prior.

[upbeat music]

What are my world clocks?

What world clocks?

Wait, what is this one?

What's Cupertino?

Cupertino, I guess that's--

Cupertino, New York, LA, Paris, Tokyo, Adelaide.

Petaluma, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Amsterdam.

This is all of them.

Houston, Tokyo, Barcelona, New York.

Hawaii because you just never know

if you're ever gonna travel to Hawaii.

Vancouver, never been there.

I didn't even know you could save world clock.

So I have zero.

[indistinct] because [laughs] I was planning

on qualifying, but I didn't.

Iceland.

A girl I dated lives in Iceland, so.

I have so many New York, Anchorage, London, San Francisco,

Denver, Seattle, Austin, Stockholm, Tokyo, Berlin,

Abu Dhabi, Cape Town, Paris, Columbus, Barcelona, Auckland,

Phoenix, Singapore and Osaka.

I don't delete anything.

I have no world clocks.

I have seven different alarms.

We can look at.

Paris.

Paris.

Paris at the very end.

[upbeat music]

Champs Elysee.

It's a big thing in cycling.

This time around I'm really excited to go to Paris

to be a part of history.

See it with all the Olympic excitement.

Especially with fencing

being a very historical sport there.

I'm looking forward to competing in the Grand Palace

and in Paris in front of all my friends, family, and fans.

Probably the architecture.

Walking around the neighborhoods with no plans

and just seeing where the streets take me to.

Walking around the Louvre at night.

Rounding the corner the first time

and seeing the Eiffel Tower.

Roland-Garros and the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower with my family.

I'm excited for my mom to see the Eiffel Tower.

Paris was actually my very first international trip I ever

went on and competed when I was 14

and I went with my late mother.

So I've got photos at all the tourist attractions and stuff.

So I'm really looking forward

to hopefully enjoying those things with some

of my other family and getting some photos as well.

You could pop into any little cafe

and the food is amazing.

The best is the food.

The bakeries are awesome.

There's a bakery on every corner.

I love pastries, cakes, anything baked.

Anyone can find their place in Paris.

[upbeat music]

3X3 basketball takes us all over the world.

But we can't wait for you guys to watch us in Paris.

See you all in Paris, oui oui.

See you guys in Paris.

We'll see you in Paris.

Thanks guys.

Looking forward to seeing you in Paris.

See you guys in Paris.

See you in Paris, thanks for having me.

[gentle music]