• Not all athletes at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo play professional sports full-time.
• An analyst at Goldman Sachs has also been training to be a pitcher for Israel.
• A nurse worked 10-hour shifts during the pandemic in between rowing practice.
Eric Brodkowitz, Israel – Baseball
Eric Brodkowitz already had what many would consider a dream job — he’s an analyst at Goldman Sachs — until team Israel called needing a pitcher.
The Yale graduate was able to work remotely in Idaho to train with Israel’s national baseball team, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Brodkowtiz, who thought his baseball career was “probably over,” got Israeli citizenship in order to be able to pitch in the summer games, but how exactly did he manage the workload at Goldman Sachs?
The paper reported that Brodkowitz never took a leave of absence and when the team was busy qualifying in Bulgaria in 2019, he used vacation days and crunched work during odd hours of the day.
He’s been named an alternate for Israel.
Joan Poh, Singapore – Rowing
The past year has been a hectic one for Poh. While she had planned to train and compete full time to represent Singapore as a rower ahead of the Tokyo Games, the pandemic hit and put everything on hold.
So Poh, 30, returned to her job as a nurse in Singapore, The New York Times reported.
She reportedly worked eight-to-10-hour shifts at a hospital and squeezed workouts before and after work, while making up time on the weekends.
“In a time of pandemic, going back to work felt like a calling,” she told the paper. “When I’m at work, I’m 100 percent a nurse. When I’m training, I’m 100 percent a rower. It’s always about finding that balance and making it work.”
Poh is one of just 23 athletes representing Singapore this year.
Gerek Meinhardt, United States – Fencing
Three-time Olympic fencer Gerek Meinhardt trained two hours every morning for the Rio Olympics in 2016 before heading to work as a risk analytics consultant at Deloitte in San Francisco.
Although the 2016 Olympic games were supposed to be his last, the youngest ever USA Olympian fencer at age 18 will head to Japan once again — but this time he’s also an MD candidate at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.
Meinhardt completed his first semester in the program in December 2020.
Paul Adams, Australia – Skeet Shooting
When Paul Adams isn’t competing in skeet shooting events, he works as a registered nurse in Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia.
After failing to make his Olympic debut in 2012, Adams, 29, was able to live out his Olympic dreams at the Rio 2016 Games, where just shortly before, he began working at a hospital in Brisbane.
Adams told the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Journal that people are a little shocked he has a day job.
“Some people [patients] are a little bit blown away,” Adams said earlier this month. “They can’t understand why I’m working and think I should be out there shooting and that it should be my job and career, like some of the other sports out there. It just doesn’t work that way here in Australia.”
He will compete in men’s skeet in Japan.
Ezinne Kalu, Nigeria – Basketball
The Nigerian-American professional basketball player will appear in the summer games for Nigeria. However, when Kalu, 29, isn’t on the court, she’s an entrepreneur.
As the owner of Kalu Kosmetics, a cosmetics company based in New Jersey, she aims to follow cosmetic trends and create new ones. Established in 2017, the brand sells products on its website.
“I wanted to create a brand for women who are told that because we play a sport we can’t get dressed up or wear make-up,” she said recently.
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