Sylvia Hoffman.Photo: Sylvia Hoffman/Instagram
“He didn’t break the record, but the fact he attempted it in front of me got me so excited,” Hoffman recalls. “The gym was filled with people watching just as if it was a basketball game. And I was like, ‘Wow! I want to do that.’ “So, Hoffman approached the weightlifting coach and asked how she could join the team. “He didn’t believe me, so I kept coming back,” she laughs.
Sylvia Hoffman.Sylvia Hoffman/Instagram
The weightlifting beginner dove headfirst into the sport, soon clawing her way to a roster spot with Team USA and unexpectedly discovering she had opportunities to compete around the world. “I remember being like, ‘Wait a minute, this competition is in Malaysia?’ Like, ‘What? You’ve got to leave the country? That’s awesome!’ " she recounts, cracking up at her naivety. “I never left the country until I made my first weightlifting team.“But again, Hoffman felt like she began to hit a ceiling. “I had the physical capabilities but not the technique” required to get to an Olympic level, she says. She thought maybe it was time to start using her degree in computer information systems and work full-time instead.After moving to Colorado Springs in 2013 — where there were both employment opportunities and an Olympic training facility — Hoffman got a job with Geek Squad and then accepted a position as an installation tech with Hewlett-Packard. But the routine began to feel like treading water: “I was on autopilot.““It was a very depressing time,” she says.“Then I saw an ad forThe Next Olympic Hopefuland that it was going to be in Colorado Springs at the Olympic training center 15 minutes away from my house.”
Hoffman again dove headfirst into a new sport, quickly qualifying for the Bobsleigh World Cup — the league for international-level competition where all the world’s Olympic bobsledders compete. “All this happened in like three months,” Hoffman says. “It was crazy. It all happened really fast.”
Sylvia Hoffman.Caroline Seidel/picture alliance/Getty
Sylvia Hoffman.Adam Pretty/Getty
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.
To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Winter Olympics, beginning Feb 3, and the Paralympics, beginning March 4, on NBC.
source: people.com
