Olympic track and field gold medalist Gabby Thomas shared a PSA explaining that she fears she’s being stalked by a group of middle-aged men, who allegedly followed her to and from multiple cities in the United States recently.
In a video posted to her TikTok on Tuesday, Thomas recalled a “really scary” encounter with several middle-aged men who became “aggressive and hostile” when she declined to sign a bunch of photos of her while at an airport.
“I need advice right now because I fear that I’m being stalked and I genuinely don’t know what to do or who to go to,” Thomas, who won three gold medals at the 2024 Paris Games, began. “At this point, every time I travel I’m afraid that these men, it’s three to six of them, middle-aged, are going to show up and harass me. And it doesn’t matter what city — they’ve come when I was traveling to and from Chicago, they’ve come when I was traveling to and from Miami and they have my flight information.
“And they show up either at the front door of the airport at the correct concourse or they show up at my gate, which means they have flight tickets and they get past security and all that. And they show up and they ask me to sign a bunch of photos and picture of me, like 40 of them. I don’t know what they’re doing with them, probaby selling them, I don’t care.
“What scares me is that they have my flight information, even when I don’t even know what time I’m flying out sometimes. I don’t tell anyone my flight information. I’ve changed all my email passwords. I don’t know if they’re hacking me. But they get really aggressive and hostile if I say no and when I’m by myself, it’s really scary. They got really hostile with my boyfriend [Spencer McManes] yesterday. It’s not even airline specific, but I don’t know how they’re getting my flight information and but it’s really starting to freak me out.”
Thomas and McManes, a former quarterback at Yale, have been dating since 2022.
She shared two other videos during which she filmed two men, who she said were “stalking me” at the Chicago airport.
“They’re stalking me at O’Hare. I got your faces,” Thomas said in the video after a TikTok user suggested she should film her suspected stalkers.
One man was wearing a U.S. Army hat.
Another man, who was wearing a grey hat, covered his face with his Chicago Bears sweatshirt.
In her initial video, Thomas said the men lied when she asked how they got her flight information.
“They make up a story. They say, ‘Oh, I saw you here, so I figured you were flying back.’ And the stories don’t make sense,” the American sprinter said. “They just get really aggravated and easily angry so I don’t talk too much, I just walk away.”
“I don’t get why people can’t respect privacy. I really don’t get it. I don’t like feeling unsafe traveling. I don’t know what to do.”
Thomas explained that she was unsure how to go about the situation, in terms of who she could report it to since it’s occurred at multiple places.
“Do I go to the police or airport security?” she asked. “It’s like a multi-city thing, so it’s like I can’t just got to the Austin police … I don’t know where these people live.”
As of Wednesday, Thomas, who is a native of Austin, had yet to share another update.
The Olympic sprinter has been in the spotlight more after her gold medal run at the Paris Games last summer.
Thomas made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in December and she was featured in “Vogue” the next month.
The brunette beauty will make her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit debut in the magazine’s 2025 issue in May.
