The US Paralympics Track & Field National Championships get underway Friday, kicking off a jam-packed 2024 calendar that includes three more pressure-packed meets—the World Para Athletics Championships in May, the Paralympic Trials in July, and the Paralympics in September—over the next six months. It’s the kind of grind that can wear an athlete down mentally, especially when things aren’t going well in training. But when you’re at the top of your game, a string of high-profile competitions provides a career-defining opportunity.
Beatriz Hatz has seen it from both sides. Last year she battled herself, growing so frustrated with her performance (and some persistent equipment issues) that she fell out of love with parasports. She pulled out of the spiral in time to put on a dominant display at the Parapan American Games last November, where she won four medals (including two golds) and notched a season-best time in the 200 meters. Those triumphs, paired with a new prosthetic solution, put Hatz in a positive frame of mind heading into this high-stakes summer. After narrowly missing the podium at the Tokyo Games and at last year’s Worlds, she’s poised for a breakthrough.
She started this season with a 13.09 in the 100m (her second-best mark ever) at the Beach Opener, racing against nondisabled athletes. This weekend’s Nationals will provide an early look at where Hatz stands against her parasports peers. You can stream the meet live at US Para Track and Field’s Facebook page; all three of Hatz’s events (the 100m, 200m, and long jump) are scheduled for Friday.
The conversation below dates to last year, but we haven’t found the right moment to share it; better late than never. The interview is lightly edited for clarity and comprehension. Keep up with Hatz at her Instagram page, @bhatz_track.
Do you have a preference between sprinting and long jumping?
Long jump is is my favorite event, but it can get really frustrating, because the majority of it is really mental. So when I get frustrated, it’s a little tough. But I do feel like I’m on the right track. I’ve done a lot more work toward the board. I have to hit it a certain angle, so a lot of it is just repetition. My runway feels really good; I feel fast. And I feel that I can push out strong. Honestly, there’s just a couple of key things I need to really focus on, and I think I can really jump far.
Talk to me about the mental game a little more. When you’re getting ready to take your approach, are you really zeroing in on mechanics? Or do you need to clear your mind in order to execute?
I do get kind of anxious. I mean, when you’re on that stage, it’s kind of scary. But I will take a big deep breaths and give myself one or two things to focus on so that I’m not overthinking during my actual jumps. I do this every time now, because I’ve felt that it really helps me. So if I know that my runway is looking good, then I don’t really focus on that. I focus on what I know I need to do, and that is staying tall and having higher knees when I get closer to the board. So my runway is very like consistent, and that’s fine. That gives me one less thing to worry about. So I typically just think about, okay, get my knees tall and good posture. And if I can execute both those things, I can get the height that I need when I’m jumping.
Were you expecting to get as close to the podium as you did in Tokyo, at your first Paralympic Games? [Hatz finished a strong fifth in the long jump, setting an American record in the process.]
I’m an extremely competitive person, so I really wanted to medal. It was there; it was in my reach. And I was a little upset. But I’m still very young, and it can be intimidating to be around competitors who are so much older, and who have been around the game longer. But I have to tell myself that I’m a fierce competitor and they should be scared of me. My coach put it into perspective. I was just 20 years old at the time. He was like, “Listen, that was crazy. We’re so close. Maybe it’s not your time yet, but we have time.” So now that I’m a little older, looking back at it, I’m okay with that. It was awesome to get that close, but now I’m even closer. At the end of the day, I want to make my family proud. I want to make myself proud. I want to make my coach proud.
Are there any specific skills you’re trying to make progress on between now and Paris?
I want to get much stronger and more powerful, and I want my reaction time to be better. Reaction time is how quickly you can get out of the blocks, how quick you can react to the sound of the gun. It isn’t the strongest part of my race. I would say that my drive phase is pretty strong, and when I get upright, I am moving pretty quick. But if I can really fix that start in how quickly I react to that gun, I will definitely run very fast.
Are there any people you have modeled yourself after, either as a competitor or off the track? Anyone you’ve really looked up to and who’s influenced you?
Yeah . . . actually, this is gonna sound kind of funny. I’m a track and field coach, and one of my athletes, I actually look up to him. His name is Diego and he’s only 16, so he’s quite young. But his attitude toward the whole sport is why I look up to him. I had a pretty frustrating season, a lot of issues with the prosthetic and having to learn how to do certain things with it and get accustomed to it. It can get frustrating, and sometimes you don’t feel that you love the sport the same. But coaching him helped me so much, because this kid would have an amazing day, a great day, or a bad day, and he would still have a smile on his face. And he’d be excited to just compete. He’d always just tell me, I’m excited to just be in the sandpit. I’m excited to just be here.
And he reminded me that that’s the attitude that I need. I’ve kind of lost that that attitude, you know? I’ve made a lot of US teams—I haven’t missed a team since I was like 17—so I have gotten spoiled. And I think having this tough season is kind of what I needed and seeing how his attitude is just so positive, he’s the athlete that I want to be. And so I modeled myself after him now. I’ll sit there and I think, What would he do? I’m not having the best long jump practice, but I know Diego would be so excited to just even be jumping today.
What is the coaching relationship? Are you coaching a high school team? Is that a private coaching arrangement?
I coached for Claremont High School, out here in California. I got to work a lot with him one on one, because the school is small. The track team consists of not that many kids, I would say maybe 30 or 40 kids, if that. So it was just me and him, basically. He’s a great kid. He ended up being the only kid on our team to qualify for CIF, which is similar to state. It’s a huge track meet out here in California. I mean, you wouldn’t think you can look up to somebody that’s younger than you, but his attitude is what really makes me think: This is the athlete I want to be.
Wait till you get to be my age, you’ll always be looking to people younger than you for inspiration. . . . Tell me about the frustrations you’ve come up against. You mentioned that your prosthesis is giving you a hard time. Did you change equipment?
So the socket is made out of carbon fiber. If I gain or lose weight, it’s not going to sit the same as when I was fitted for it. I need to maintain the exact same weight, so the volume in my limb does not change. It’s a little easier when you lose weight, because you can just add a sock to it. But sometimes there’ll be days where, you know, the socket’s rubbing on my leg kind of weird, so it’ll kind of hurt a little bit.
We did change blades. And there are different kinds—there’s sprinting blades, there’s jumping blades, and it’s honestly finding one that will work best for me. A lot of people don’t know this—I didn’t even know this—but they have different ones for how much you weigh. If you weigh between, I don’t know, 90 to 150 pounds, you’re on this category of leg. And if you weighed a different amount, you’re on a different category leg. Some of the blades can be too soft, and if it’s too soft, I’m able to compress it way too much and it’s not going to give me the energy return that I want. But if the leg is too stiff, then I’m not compressing it enough; now I’m overexerting myself, putting too much energy into it and not getting enough out. So it’s honestly almost like Goldilocks. This one’s too soft, this one’s too hard, this one is just right. It’s finding the one that is just right. And that is such a frustrating process.
And it’s just trial and error?
Yep. A lot of trial and error.
Of course, all amputees go through volume changes, and I’m sure your workout includes all kinds of things that are going to affect that volume. And then there’s your food intake as well. Do you have to keep track of all that yourself? Or do you have a nutritionist or a trainer to help you maintain stability?
Yeah, I have an amazing team. My team consists of my track coach who writes my workouts; his name is Kris Mack. Then I have Gustavo, my weightlifting coach, who’s in charge of everything I do in the gym. And I have my dietician, Sally, and she’s great. She keeps track of all kinds of stuff. We get blood work done, and she’ll say, “This is what all these tests told me, so I need you to start taking these supplements, and I need you to eat more of this, and I need you to drink more water or do this.” We keep track of my weight—I weighed this much in October of 2020, so where am I at in October of 2023? We try not to compare too much, because I am getting older and my body is going to continue changing. It’s not something that we’re religiously obsessed with. But it is a good idea to know, if I had a great performance last year back in July, how much did I weigh? How much do I weigh right now? How much of that is muscle, and how much of that is fat? But it’s really important not to hyperfocus on how much you weigh, because that can have a negative impact on your mentality.
You’ve been involved in para sports at a high level for seven years. What have you seen over that period of time that encourages you about the direction of the parasports movement?
Tokyo was the first time that (Summer) Paralympians and Olympians were paid the same amount for medals at the Games. That’s just one more step toward equality and toward having the movement become widely known. It’s something we’re working on, and the movement is slowly growing. Can it be bigger? Yes, for sure. Will it happen quickly? Probably not. Because of how people with disabilities have been portrayed in the media, it’s a little tougher to explain the Paralympics. Because people will see three racers in a wheelchair, and they assume all of them have the exact same disability, when that’s very much not the case, they can all have different disabilities.
Honestly, one thing that we could do to be better is to be more informative. They could explain that the T64 classification is below-knee amputees, the T63 classification is above-knee amputees. If they could go into detail, and take the extra step to explain certain disabilities, then more people will understand it. I think that we will definitely help.