SAINT-DENIS, France – The shine of Olympic gold can blind us to the secret pain of the champion who wears it.

Overcoming that pain, caused by an obsession with winning that drove her to a dark and lonely place, is why Valarie Allman is doubly proud of becoming the first U.S. woman to win the discus in back-to-back Olympics.

“I might be the only person in the world who probably had too much discus in their life,” Allman said Monday.

She never would have defeated the competition at the Summer Games in France without first correcting the unhealthy imbalances in her life.

But now a teenager that never picked up a discus until friends at Silver Creek High School in Longmont cajoled her to pick up a discus and give it a spin is a 29-year-old, double gold-plated champ.

Funny what unexpected twists this life throws at you, eh?

On a sizzling summer evening, Allman felt the heat of competition from former world champion Feng Bin of China and two-time Olympic titlist Sandra Elkasevic of Croatia for nearly two hours.

Allman held off their challenges with a throw that was one thin blade of grass longer than 228 feet, but more than enough to claim the crown as Queen of the Discus.

“I cannot tell you I am happy. I am not happy when somebody beats me,” said Elkasevic, who reluctantly surrendered her self-anointed title of Discus Queen. “Already I know it’s going to be a nice fight with (Allman) at Los Angeles in the Olympics of 2028. We’ll see you there.”

What’s even more impressive than the raw power generated by Allman in the discus circle or the muscular eight-pack of her midsection is a willingness to embrace the vulnerability that made repeating as Olympic champ such mental anguish.

The once and future Queen of the Discus learned the hard way that heavy is the head that wears the crown.

“The psychology part,” Allman said, “is the battle.”

From the gloom of the pandemic-restricted Summer Games in 2021, Allman emerged as a shining star for Team USA in Tokyo.

With grace of a dancer that toured as a Colorado teenager with the television show ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’, she spun gold with a toss of a little more than 226 feet won with ease over runner-up Kristen Pudenz of Germany.

But after climbing atop the podium to be saluted as an Olympic champion, a not-so-funny and totally unsettling thing happened to Allman on her way back to the United States.

Back home, tried as Allman might, she couldn’t find peace of mind.

An Olympic dream come true slowly morphed into a nightmare that jolted Allman awake on too many mornings with the gnawing feeling she had not achieved enough to deserve happiness.

For a dancer always light on her feet, with a song in her heart, Allman felt oddly out of balance. The weight of winning an Olympic medal began to feel like an albatross dragging down her spirits.

Succumbing to a very human affliction that chokes the joy from world-class athletes more often than you might think, Allman felt trapped and isolated by her own success.

In the mirror, she saw that Colorado teenager who only picked up the discus for the first time because friends at Silver Creek High School bribed her with a spaghetti dinner.

Years later, Allman was supposed to believe she was the top dog in the world? A conquering hero? The face of her sport?

Allman wasn’t ready for any of that noise.

And it blew her mind.

“Definitely dealt with a lot of competition anxiety of feeling like I needed to live up to winning the Olympics, and just needing to perform well and not be a failure, which took away from the excitement of preparing for competition and having that excited, ready-to-go-after-it feeling,” Allman confessed in a revealing 2023 interview with Wondermind, a website co-founded by singer and actress Selena Gomez that’s committed to mental health.

No matter how often Allman told herself to enjoy being No. 1 in the world, there was a nagging sense of dissatisfaction.

“It’s easy to get so consumed with pursuing a dream, pursuing a goal and letting your scale get really off,” she said. “It can be pretty jarring and feel pretty isolating.”

Over the past three years, she bought a house, fell in love, discovered the joy of cooking and slowly learned that having a more balanced life was the best antidote to her discus obsession messing with her head.

“So much of the journey in the last few years was finding joy outside of professional track and field,” said Allman, who painstakingly rehabilitated her competitive edge by winning bronze and silver at the 2022 and 2023 world championships.

Yes, when Allman’s first of six throws on Monday landed foul and she was the only of 12 finalists without a mark on the board, it was unnerving.

“It felt so wrong. I felt like a fish out of water,” she admitted. “I fell a little bit in the pressure of the moment.”

But Allman didn’t freak out. “I pulled myself together,” she said.

Allman responded with a throw in the second round that vaulted her to first place. Suddenly, the defending Olympic champ was grooving. No longer thinking. Just going for gold.

Then, in the fourth round, when the competition leaders begin entering the ring one directly after another, in head-to-head showdowns?

Boom went the dynamite!

With her longest heave of the night, Allman skipped out of the ring with joy, knowing gold was within reach.

And, shortly thereafter, when the final challenges by Feng and Elkasevic came up short, Allman was left alone to soak in the adulation of nearly 80,000 fans in Stade de France.

“I was ready to fight come Round Six,” Allman said. “But to walk into the ring, having one last attempt, knowing I already won, it was hard fighting back tears. But I wanted to embrace the crowd. I wanted to embrace this moment at the Olympics, giving it my all.”

It was the ultimate victory for a champion who has learned the hard way:

The real victory is in learning how to embrace the joy.