In 2021, Rachel Dincoff came from nowhere–well, New Mexico anyway–to seize a spot on the US team for the Tokyo Olympics. She’d moved to America’s 36th most populous state three years earlier to work with Coach Doug Reynolds, and her sacrifice–New Mexico is home to 47 different types of snakes for god’s sake–had finally paid off. She followed that success by making the US team again in 2022, this time for the World Championships, and as she prepared for the 2023 season, Rachel had reason to believe that her dream of becoming one of the world’s top discus throwers might be coming true. 

Then disaster struck. And re-struck. And struck again.

I’ll let Rachel tell the story, but suffice it to say that when she enters the ring next week at the World Invitational in Ramona, it will be a meaningful moment for her and for the sport to which she has given so much. 

The last time I saw you was in Eugene for the 2022 Worlds. You finished your season a few weeks later at the ISTAF meet in Berlin, and have not competed since! What happened?

In early March of 2023, I was back in Florida where I live after doing a training camp with Doug in Kansas, where he coaches now. I’d been sick for a few days, and was still not feeling well when I got up for a Sunday morning workout. My intuition told me to take a rest day, but the athlete inside of me said, “No! You must work out!” I was doing a plyometric exercise and Boom! It felt like someone had thrown something and hit me in the back of the leg. 

It’s hard to say with an injury like that if it happened in the moment or it had been building over time, but I knew right away it was serious. My boyfriend, Carl Lawson, was in the gym with me. He’s a pro football player and he’d torn his Achilles a couple of years earlier. He scooped me up, put me on a bench and did a Thompson test on my leg, and he could tell right away I’d torn mine. I was in surgery three days later. 

That must have been devastating, with another World Championships coming up in 2023, and the Olympics in 2024.

I was actually pretty optimistic at first. Carl and I live in south Florida, which is a big football community, and we knew players who’d recovered from a torn Achilles in the space of a year. Carl had done it himself. He tore his Achilles in August of 2021, had to have two surgeries, and still made it back for the 2022, so I saw no reason why I couldn’t do the same thing and recover in time to compete for a spot in Paris.

But a couple of months into my recovery, I felt like I still didn’t have a strong connection down there. An Achilles tear takes time to heal, but even after five months of hard work, I wasn’t making progress, and I started to feel the clock winding down on my chances to get ready for 2024. It was the most stressed I’d ever been. I just couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting better. I’d had an uncomfortable experience with a medical professional who was pulling on my ankle at an early stage, something which I now know should not have been done. But I couldn’t say for sure if that caused a setback, or if I was just pushing too hard in rehab. Finally, I went back to Dr. O’Malley in New York, who had done my surgery. He examined me and saw that my Achilles needed to be repaired again!

The difficult conversation this time was whether he should take part of my hamstring to repair the Achilles or use tissue from a cadaver. Carl had done it with his hamstring, and using your own tissue is better in some ways, so that’s what I chose to do. But then I had an MRI in the morning before the second surgery, and it showed that the tendon wasn’t too badly torn, and they said they could probably fix it using the cadaver tissue, which would make for a shorter recovery period because I wouldn’t also be dealing with weakness in my hamstring. So that’s what we chose to do.

And then…?

Four months later I started showing signs that my body was rejecting the cadaver tissue.

So, in December of 2023, I had my third surgery. They took, I believe, seven inches of part of my hamstring and also a tendon from my foot and used that to repair my Achilles.

How were you able to keep it together through all that?

I did a pretty good job of staying positive and focusing on my goals, even after the third surgery. I kept telling myself that I could still make it back for the Olympic Trials, which I know was kind of crazy, but I needed something to keep me going or I was going to get very depressed. 

And of course, I had Carl. He’d been through two Achilles surgeries and before that two ACL surgeries, and he understood the physical and emotional toll that takes on an athlete. 

Carl was dealing with some difficulties in his sport at the same time, wasn’t he?

He was. After tearing his Achilles and missing his first year with the New York Jets, he came back strong and got seven sacks in 2022. But in 2023, he had a lot of frustrations with the team. They lost Aaron Rogers right away, then for some reason they stopped playing Carl very much, which was really disappointing, so we had to be there for each other. Sometimes, it was like, “Who’s got the sunshine today?” But we got through it, and all that trauma made our relationship even stronger.

And things have finally settled down for both of you, yes?

They have. Carl signed with the Cowboys last year and had some really good games. It was a nice comeback year where he showed he’s still in the mix . In that business, they like to push out the veterans sometimes, but he was like “I’m here to stay!”  And after all he’s been through, it’s amazing the way he’s moving now. The guy is a freak. I mean that as a compliment.

Of course. And you’re back on track as well?

I’m pretty much ready to go with my training. I need to give myself more grace, as hard as that is to do as an athlete, but I’m throwing well and seeing good things. I know I’m probably not going to PR in Oklahoma, but I’m excited to get started again.

Ideally, I wouldn’t want to open up this early, but my goal is to make the World Championships this summer, and this meet has points. And since I haven’t competed in two years, I need to get some meets under me to get my feel back for competing, for dealing with nerves and things like that.

What is your training setup like these days?

Doug will always be my primary coach. With him in Kansas and me in Florida, we spend a lot of time on the phone, and I send him videos. After the meet in Oklahoma, I’ll go to Kansas to train with him for a while and compete there.

I also have a few people who watch me train a little bit here in Florida. On Wednesdays, I go to the University of Miami and train with Coach Cory Young and some of the throwers there. Some days, I throw at a high school near here. Wolfgang Schmidt watches me sometimes.

Wolfgang Schmidt?

Yep. I really enjoy working with him. Doug and I are two peas in a pod in that we both love biomechanics and breaking stuff down, but that sometimes leads to me overthinking. Wolfgang is very relaxed. Are you balanced? Is the disc coming out of your hand nicely? His idea is to get the basics down–foot in the middle, good release, discus behind you–and your body will figure it out from there. At first, his approach was so simple I was wondering if I’d get anything out of it, but now I can see how it builds confidence and rhythm. I really enjoy his coaching style. 

Note: The World Invitational will take place at Throw Town from April 10-13. Check out Throws University for a livestream featuring Joe Frontier and Moi as commentators!