The Rush: Aly Raisman’s unbreakable bond with Simone Biles and life after gymnastics

Athlete, activist and Olympic champion gymnast Aly Raisman joins The Rush to chat with Jared about how she’s experienced a personal renaissance of sorts during the pandemic, worked hard to figure out who she is as a person without gymnastics, how shared trauma makes her friendship with Simone Biles and other former teammates so unique and Aly reveals the celebrity who left her embarrassingly starstruck. Plus, Aly recently spent time with Serena Williams and the two chatted about their experiences as elite athletes managing migraines with help from UBRELVY® (ubrogepant).

Video Transcript

JARED QUAY: As a celebrity yourself, is there anyone else you get starstruck when you see? Who gets you off your game? You're like, oh snap. That's so-and-so.

ALY RAISMAN: When I was 18, I was with my teammates. We had just finished competing at the 2012 Olympics. We got to talk to Justin Bieber on the phone. And I did not play it cool. And my teammates were not happy with me. I think that Justin's manager was like, if you don't calm down, you got to get off the phone. I was freaking out. But now I think, I've seen him since then. And I played it cool. So hopefully, he doesn't remember that. But--

JARED QUAY: What's up, everybody? I'm here with athlete, activist, and forever Olympic champion, Aly Raisman. How are you doing today?

ALY RAISMAN: Hi. I'm good. How are you?

JARED QUAY: I'm doing good. I'm glad you're on "The Rush". So I was on Instagram. And it's telling me the last two years, you wrote a ton of books, you are a gardener, and you adopted a dog. How have you been holding up since the pandemic?

ALY RAISMAN: I know the pandemic has been so devastating for so many people around the world and for so many different reasons. And I think I just want to say how grateful I am for my health and my family's health. Definitely was a time where I really stopped and really took a hard look at my life, and what I was doing, and really was reflected on a lot of things. And it just was a time where I realized just truly how lucky I am. So I feel very grateful. And I actually have my dog Milo sleeping right next to me.

And Milo has been so amazing. I rescued him. But I say he rescued me because he's so special to me.

JARED QUAY: You retired from your job in your early 20s. So what's it been like trying to figure out who you are away from the gym at this age?

ALY RAISMAN: Yeah, that's a great question, and something that I think about a lot. I think that for so many athletes, sometimes, it can be easy to define our worth by our results. And I definitely did that when I was competing. And I think it's taken me a really long time. And I'm still in therapy just kind of navigating who I am outside of gymnastics.

I think it's just been kind of just trying to figure out what feels good for me, and not making decisions based off of what I think I should do, or trying to please somebody else, which is so much easier said than done.

JARED QUAY: You recently hung out with Simone Biles. What was it like? And do you think your former teammate will be competing in the Paris '24 Olympics?

ALY RAISMAN: That's a good question. I am sure she's putting in so much thought into it. So I think either way, I'm really excited for her. I'm curious. I don't even know if she actually knows the answer yet. So I guess we'll have to wait and see.

JARED QUAY: How did your friendship change when you guys realized you had a shared trauma?

ALY RAISMAN: Myself and my teammates, we have been through so many amazing moments together. And we have a very unique friendship and relationship because we've experienced a lot of highs together. We've experienced a lot of lows together. When you get to know your teammates so well that you feel like you can almost know what your teammate wants to say or is thinking just by a look, it's a very special connection, and I think one that will hopefully bond us for a very long time.

JARED QUAY: A lot of elite athletes have chronic health problems that we don't hear about at home. At what stage of your career did you start experiencing migraines?

ALY RAISMAN: So I can remember as a young kid, I would just go upstairs, and my mom would be like laying in bed with the lights off. And so I, even though I saw my mom really struggling with migraine, I always thought that mine were headaches. And I think that migraine, it's very-- there's kind of a stigma in our society where I don't think that a lot of people understand what migraine is. And I personally didn't even understand it. So that's why I am really excited to be partnered with [INAUDIBLE] and Ubrelvy because I've been able to personally learn so much more through this partnership.

For me, my symptoms are sometimes it can be light sensitivity, fatigue, nausea, headache, scalp sensitivity. And I didn't know that those were all symptoms of my migraine. So it feels good that I can finally understand what's happening.

JARED QUAY: You actually recently chatted with Serena Williams about migraines. Were you surprised to find out you guys had something else in common?

ALY RAISMAN: I mean, I have been a fan of Serena since the moment that I first saw her on TV. I think Serena is just amazing. And the word amazing doesn't even do justice. I have so much respect for Serena. I don't know how she does it. When we were having a conversation, I kept asking her. I'm like, I don't know how you do everything you do. I mean, being the athlete that she is takes so much time and so much energy.

She's also a mom, she's also an incredible businesswoman. I mean, she just really does it all. So to be able to relate to her on something that's so vulnerable and so personal, it's also validating for me. I think both of us have talked about how when we were training, we didn't want to take medication because we want it to be really tough, and we learned as athletes to try to push through as much as we could.

I think that we're both trying to really listen to our bodies. And when we do feel a migraine attack coming on, it's the best thing to do is take Ubrelvy for us, at least right away. We obviously recognize Ubrelvy might not be right for every single person. But I think just listening to my body and learning what feels right for me, it's been nice to have that validated by Serena. So it's been really cool to get to know her.