Courtesy of Hunter Woodhall
To mark the first year of LIONS Sport, I spoke with Hunter Woodhall — a three-time Paralympian who has won five Paralympic medals. Woodhall’s project, “The Unbreakable Twin” with Deloitte, was shortlisted for the festival’s Innovation category. He will speak during the festival’s official program and at Sport Beach. Woodhall and his wife, Tara Davis-Woodhall — the reigning Olympic gold medalist and world champion in the long jump — have built a large shared social media following in addition to their personal accounts.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Dylan Wells: How important is social media to athletes today? How much do you feel like you have to focus on content in addition to your craft and actual game?
Hunter Woodhall: It completely depends on the sport in which you compete. I think for some of these larger sports where there's massive contracts with the teams, that's totally up to the athlete and where their excitement lies for posting content or their privacy. But in a more niche, track and field included — and women's track and field, and para track and field, especially — it is imperative that you have that presence online, and you kind of have to take over telling your own story, getting people to care what you're doing, and getting people involved in the sport, and kind of educating people on that. So for us, it's literally everything.
It's given us every opportunity within the sport. It has allowed us to focus more on the sport, because we can support ourselves financially and everything through what we do on social. And the business side, it's also helped us create really special relationships with a community of people and fans, and I think introduce a lot of new people to a sport that we really love so much.
DW: Social media and fandom are so intertwined today. How do you think about that dynamic as an athlete?
HW: In a lot of ways, people look at athletes as just game day performance, and it's like everything's really perfect. We like to show a more realistic side of what the process of being an athlete is like day in and day out. Also, between Tara and I, we're only competing for seconds at a time, it's such a short amount of time. To expect an audience or a fan to build a connection with you just in that short amount of time is really challenging. So I think being able to show more personality, authentic self and what it takes to get to that few seconds that you see on TV is really special, and you build a different kind of relationship with people.
DW: You’re not the first Olympian creator I’ve spoken to who has funded their sport through social media. How has content changed the financial realities of your training and career?
HW: So many folks that I know in the sport are working one to two jobs on top of being professional athletes. Maybe that requires them taking really late night shifts, or really early morning shifts, or training really early, and that takes so much out on your body. It becomes challenging to be able to kind of balance both things … having a job, and then being an athlete is also a full-time job.
People assume if you're in the Olympics, you're well financially supported by the team, but it's really not the case. But social media is a way where you can take the thing that you're already doing every single day and present it in a way where one, people can be engaged, fans can be engaged, you can create an audience, and then off of that audience you can bring value to businesses and companies who want to support whatever niche you're in, if it's disabled sport, if it's women in sports, if it's Olympics, if you're a runner, there's an audience for everything nowadays.
DW: What is it that you think athletes offer brands, compared to other creators?
HW: Sport is such a connector in communities. I look at the Knicks winning the NBA championship and seeing the camaraderie in the city, the entire city was connected over sport. Culture and sport are so interconnected, and I think brands love being a part of that because they see how powerful it is. And the best thing about sports is you never know what's going to happen. None of it's scripted, none of it's written, it's like those underdog stories, the improbable wins, all those crazy things, the game-winning shots, that's what makes sports so special.
DW: What are you watching on social media?
HW: Oh man, it depends on what platform I'm on. Instagram, it's all sports, fitness, nutrition, lots of Lego content on there. TikTok gives me usually funny stuff, it makes me laugh. YouTube, I'm kind of a nerd, honestly, so I watch a lot of news, politics, economics, video essays, that's kind of where I get my news from, to try to be up to date with what's going on in the world.
DW: Who is a creator that deserves more followers?
HW: One is my wife, Tara, on TikTok. She is hilarious. Her comment section is my favorite place on the internet, and she's like 3,000 or 4,000 followers from hitting a million on TikTok.
I have this other buddy who's a double-above-the-knee amputee, his Instagram is @beekshow and he's on this crazy running journey, running marathons, just getting better and better, and it's really inspiring to see.
This Q+A is part of Verified, a newsletter that is published by Washington Post Creator, a new business outside The Washington Post’s newsroom that is focused on the creator economy and content partnerships with independent creators. Learn more about Washington Post Creator.
