Olympic Gold Medalist Gwen Jorgensen Gives Back Through Scholarship Fund

2016 Olympic gold medalist Gwen Jorgensen has partnered with the USA Triathlon Foundation to create a scholarship fund “to support economically disadvantaged children and youth entering the sport of triathlon.”

The Gwen Jorgensen Scholarship Fund is a collaboration between Jorgensen, her husband Patrick Lemieux, and Scott Filion, a friend and training partner. The initial $35,000 they put into the scholarship is likely to grow as other people have asked to donate to the program.

Donors who are interested in supporting the Gwen Jorgensen Scholarship Fund can donate here.

Jorgensen and Lemieux organized a similar program for three years leading up to her gold-medal performance in Rio.

“I actually race with some people who were scholarship winners,” Jorgensen said in an interview earlier today. “I feel old, but I think it really does make a difference.”

The impetus to renew the program came after Filion noticed that Jorgensen had posted on Instagram that she was giving away some gear. Filion expressed a desire to help people get into the sport.

“I said I used to do this scholarship and I’d love to bring it back,” Jorgensen said. “So, he committed some money and we decided to commit some money to bring the scholarship back.”

The scholarship grants provide up to $1,500 for individuals or $5,000 per team.

“We’re focussing on grassroots, or juniors, or youth,” Jorgensen continued. “If there’s a team that’s looking to buy some bikes for their team or … fund some races or … put on a race for juniors. Anything that’s supporting youth or juniors.”

For both Lemieux and Jorgensen the scholarship is recognition of just how much support they received during her run to Olympic gold.

“I think one thing that’s been evident to me and Gwen is that, in observing her career, she had a ton of people that assisted her along the way,” Lemieux said. “That could be from the local furniture store that helped get her to her first Olympics, the local car dealership that gave her a car to get to the pool. We’ve just experienced such an immense amount of generosity for her in her career and for us to pay that back and push that forward has been something that’s really important to us. Triathlon, cycling, these sports are really expensive to get into, and if there’s a way that we can minimize that that lift, that’s something that we really want to try and help people with.” 


Jorgensen looks back at that support as being a critical part of her triathlon success.

“This comes back to just how many people invested in me and believed in me when maybe I didn’t even believe in myself and really got me to the starting line,” she said. “
I was somebody who didn’t even know about triathlon? And I was told ‘you could be an Olympian.’ And I thought they were crazy when they said that. 
When I started triathlon, I didn’t have a bike and somebody gave me a bike to have for free. I wouldn’t have even got into this sport if I didn’t have access to those things. I do want to make it more accessible, and a big reason we want to do grassroots is we want to get more people involved in the sport. 
It really is important.”

In addition to the financial support, Jorgensen has also enjoyed supporting scholarship winners in other ways, including mentoring.

“That has definitely been a role in it and something that I’m willing to do this year as well,” she said. “
I think this year we’re focussing a lot more on grassroots. But, in the past, I was available to talk to scholarship winners and I talked to each of them at least once. Sometimes we worked with a few junior groups as well – coaches would say this person is struggling with this, would you mind talking to them? That was definitely a part of it and something that I think will continue.” 


Working with the USA Triathlon Foundation was important to both Lemieux and Jorgensen, not only because the foundation can administer the program and take donations due to it’s 501c3 status, but also to help increase awareness of what the foundation does.

“Part of the reason I wanted to work with the foundation is that, as elites, we rely on the foundation’s financial donations,” Jorgensen said. “
And so bringing awareness to the foundation is something that I’m excited about in order to hopefully grow not only the grassroots part of the sport, but also the elite level of racing.”

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