How to Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics: Everything You Need to Know

Chari Hawkins is no stranger to overcoming hurdles. 

After all, it’s one of the seven track and field events she competes in as part of the heptathlon. But before the 33-year-old ran, jumped and threw her way to representing Team USA at the 2024 Olympics, she struggled with anxiety and panic attacks that nearly stopped her in her tracks. 

Like at the 2019 USA Indoor Nationals, where she was competing in the pentathlon (a.k.a. 60m hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump, 800m run in one day).

“I was just having a really hard time,” Chari recalled in an exclusive interview with E! News. “I couldn't take a full breath. And I remember going to the bathroom and crying my eyes out. Praying, ‘Please, please, please, I just want to get this feeling taken from me and I'll do my best.’ But I couldn't. I was so miserable and so scared.”

readHow to Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony and All Your Favorite Sports

So, when the tension on her body led to her pulling a hamstring and having to withdraw from the final, she remembered feeling “more relief than sadness.” But when it sunk in that Chari—who had been in second place before her injury—had given up the chance at a medal, she knew she needed to make a change.

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Turning to friends, coaches and people online, she started getting insight into their struggles with anxiety and panic attacks.

“I learned that I'm not alone, there's nothing wrong with you if you do have anxiety,” she explained. “I learned that I was assuming that my worth as an individual, as a human, was directly applicable to my performance.”

“If I performed well, I was worthy. If I didn't perform well, I wasn't,” the 2022 USATF Indoor Championship Women’s Pentathlon winner continued. “That was the first time that it clicked in my head. Ever since then, I haven't really had a full-blown panic attack.”

That’s not to say there aren’t moments when anxiety creeps in—including during the Olympic trials. But Chari has a new way of looking at the anxiety she calls her Green Goblin.

“With my panic attacks and with the Green Goblin, what I've learned is that it's okay to be scared,” she noted, “and it's okay to feel like you can't do it as long as you are also willing to hold space for the potential that you can do it.”

When intrusive thoughts do start to creep in, Chari—who is married to CJ O’Neal—instructs herself to instead focus on what success might look and feel like.

“That changes a little bit of the chemistry of your body to give yourself this space and stand a little taller,” she explained. “You still have all of the doubt, too, but allow that to exist, too.” 

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With that mindset, running—which she initially hated “with a burning passion”—has become more than a passion but a lifeline, too.  

“Running has given me that ability to overcome something physically while overcoming something mentally,” Chari shared with E!. “It allows you to put yourself in both realms, almost on a pedestal—you're so proud of yourself for doing the thing you didn't want to do. Even though you were tired, you chose to do it.”

As she put it, “Anytime that you can really say to yourself, 'I rock' is a win. And I think running gives you the opportunity to do that a lot.”

To get to know more of Team USA competing at the Paris Olympics, read on…

Watch the 2024 Paris Olympics daily on NBC and Peacock until the summer games end with the Closing Ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 11, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.