Jadin O’Brien
Episode 380
18 MAY 2026
She competed three months ago at the Winter Olympics in Italy as a member of Team USA bobsled. She is a three-time NCAA indoor pentathlon champion, having competed for the Fighting Irish at the University of Notre Dame. She competed at two U.S. Olympic Team Trials (Track & Field) and finished fifth in the women’s heptathlon at the U.S. national championships in 2025. She started in bobsled in August 2025 and made the U.S. Bobsled team for the 2025-26 season as a push athlete. At her IBSF World Cup debut later that year in Latvia, she would finish fourth in two-woman Bobsled and be named to her first Olympic team for the Games earlier this year in Milano Cortina.
Notable guest quotes:
“The Catholic faith was the central part of my family. Growing up a very Irish Catholic family, we went to weekly Mass, including multiple times throughout the week. We’d go to Adoration as a family as often as we could. We’d say the rosary daily, practice confession multiple times a month, and made sure that God was talked about consistently in our everyday lives.”
“I developed a disease called PANDAS and essentially that disease took full control of my brain. And so, I lost the ability to just function in everyday life, such as brush my hair, put clothes on, brush my teeth, turn on the shower.”
“My whole family developed a very strong relationship with St. Thérèse of Lisieux. And by studying her life, they discovered that she suffered with OCD. And severe OCD was one of the symptoms of PANDAS… And so, we kind of latched on to her as a source of hope and through my experience with PANDAS, there was quite a few little miracles actually that happened. And we attest a lot of that to St. Thérèse’s intercession. And eventually, … through St. Thérèse’s intercession… we were able to find a doctor who was able to tell me what I had. And eventually become healed.”
“Going to Notre Dame was by far the best decision I have ever made. I loved it. Everything about the university. What it stands for, the opportunity it gives you in all areas of life. It really is unmatched… I chose Notre Dame for three reasons, the first being faith. I wanted to go to a place where I could practice my Catholic faith openly and proudly and grow in it.”
“I assumed that I’d make it to the Olympics in track and field. So, God does work in mysterious ways.”
“My high school was Divine Savior Holy Angels. It was a Catholic all-girls school out in Milwaukee. And for my whole life though, I attended Catholic grade school, high school and college.”
“During my college career, every season, I had what seemed to be a season ending injury. So, my freshman year, I had to compete on a torn quad. My sophomore year I had to compete with food poisoning and then later redshirted that season. Junior year I had a stress fracture in my shin, a torn ligament in my elbow, and after that, another stress fracture, then a strained hamstring, dealing with all that while having to compete on it. So, for a lot of my college experience, when another injury would happen, I was constantly finding myself asking why. Like, ‘Lord, why? Why do you keep putting me in these positions to suffer? Like, what? Why? It doesn’t make sense. Let me compete’!”
“I’d pray a lot. I was like, ‘Lord, please just help me heal fast. Please help me get through this.’ He was absolutely building me up and building up my mental fortitude to be able to handle some very difficult things. And he also built up my resilience.”
“I was able to overcome these seemingly serious setbacks in my sports career and glory to God that I was able to not let that stop me and was able to do some pretty cool things in my college career.”
“I had to really learn the sport and then somehow get good at it fast enough to make the Olympic team later that year, while being in six different countries with people I had never met, learning a sport I had never done.”
“For many people, when you’re in such a position where you feel like you’re so out of control where you have really nothing tangible you can hang on to because your life is just all over the place, that is absolutely when God can shine his light.”
“It was absolutely a dream come true. The environment was magical. It was so exciting. Everyone was super patriotic, super excited, people from all countries were just so alive. Everyone was so energetic. The opening ceremony was one of the most special experiences I’ve ever had just being in Cortina, Italy, waving the flag, clapping hands with the fans, just everything about that experience and representing the United States was, there’s almost not a word for it. It was that amazing.”
Related links:
Jadin’s Team USA profile
Jadin’s track & field bio at Notre Dame