Brianne Theisen-Eaton could feel the gold slipping away. She just could not explain why.

It was almost a year ago, and Theisen-Eaton had just run, jumped and thrown through unexpected stage fright in the heptathlon at the world outdoor track and field championships in Beijing. As a favorite looking to win the first of what she and her husband — the world’s top decathlete, Ashton Eaton — hoped would be double gold medals at worlds, she had cracked on the first day of the two-day competition.

“I kept telling myself — and this is the worst thing you can say to yourself when you’re competing — ‘Don’t screw up; don’t screw up; don’t screw up,’” she said. “You just start to back off, and you are not aggressive. And I was terrified the whole time I was out there.”

Afterward, she navigated the gantlet of reporters in the Bird’s Nest stadium in a fog.

“People were asking, ‘What is going on?’” she said. “And I probably said, ‘I don’t know,’ like over 100 times.”

Finally, a reporter asked her, “Do you think you’re just not cut out for this?”

“And I looked at him and said again, ‘I don’t know,’” Theisen-Eaton recalled. “And I remember thinking that was probably my lowest point ever, to say that I didn’t believe in myself like that.”