Sign up for our free daily Olympics newsletter: Very Olympic Today. You'll catch up on the top stories, smaller events, things you may have missed while you were sleeping and links to the best writing from SI’s reporters on the ground in Tokyo.
TOKYO — The faces that filled the screen belonged to FGTs, or Friends of Gabby Thomas. Whether they connected to the videoconference from Minnesota, Texas, Seattle, the West Indies, or near her family home in western Massachusetts, they came for the same reason, the same race that made them nervous and made them scream.