No Compromise: How Lara Vadlau Became Both Doctor and Olympic Sailing Champion
An Interview with Lara Vadlau By Ollimono Magazine | 29th May 2025
What if the limits we believe in aren’t real? What if the boundaries between professional, athletic, and personal success can be blurred, or even erased, through sheer will? Lara Vadlau’s story isn’t just about medals or degrees. It’s about dismantling the false idea that high performance must come at the expense of everything else. She didn’t choose between her dreams. She pursued them all. And she made them real.
This is not a story of balance. It’s a story of defiance against limits, against convention, against the idea that greatness requires compromise.
“I wanted to become Olympic Sailing Champion as a doctor to prove to the world that it’s possible.”
Lara Vadlau grew up in Austria and started sailing at the age of seven. On a stormy afternoon, her parents put her into a small dinghy, and something sparked. “I loved it from the very first second,” she remembers.
That passion drove her through a meteoric rise: three World Cup gold medals, two European championships, and a ticket to the Rio 2016 Olympics as a favorite. But her campaign in Brazil ended in heartbreak. No medal. The public saw the loss. What they didn’t see was the decision she made afterward: to walk away from sailing and enroll in medical school.
Most would have seen that as the end of one chapter. For Lara, it was just a new axis in a life driven by challenge.
The 470 Mixed Dinghy: “Chess under extreme circumstances.”
The 470 Mixed Dinghy Class made its Olympic debut at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, replacing the separate men’s and women’s events that had existed since 1988. This shift was part of a broader initiative by World Sailing and the International Olympic Committee to promote gender equality in competitive sailing. For the first time, each team consisted of one male and one female sailor, demanding a new level of balance, coordination, and trust between partners.
Lara Vadlau embraced the challenge. “You have to play chess under extreme circumstances,” she said. “Your body burns like fire, but your mind must stay cold as ice.”
Paired with a male teammate, Lukas Mähr, she knew physical differences would be a factor. So she compensated with precision, stamina, and an extraordinary work ethic — increasing her endurance training by 50% to keep pace in strength while excelling in strategy and execution. “If you have 1% more oxygen left for your brain to think, you’ll be smarter and better than the rest.”
In Paris, it all came together. She didn’t just adapt to a new format. She mastered it. She returned. And she became the Olympic Sailing Champion.
“I try to put 44 lives into one.”
While preparing for the Games, Lara was also on hospital rotations, determined to finish her degree in medicine without pausing her Olympic dream. She studied on planes, on ferries, and in between sailing sessions. During 24-hour shifts in the hospital, she used her one-hour lunch breaks to run and maintain her endurance.
She recalls using every possible second to study — “even ashore while waiting for wind to fill in.” After long training camps, when most athletes rested, she went straight into multiple back-to-back hospital shifts to meet clinical hour requirements. Eventually, the exhaustion took its toll: her body gave in, and she collapsed with a fever over 40 degrees.
But still, she pushed forward. “If there is a will, there is a way,” she says.
“What kind of person trains for the Olympics while working hospital shifts? One who doesn’t believe in limits.”
The combination is almost unheard of. And yet she pulled it off. Medical degree in 2023. Olympic Gold medal in 2024.
Her mother, a doctor, had once been the inspiration. But after spending a year inside the system, Lara realized her path forward would be her own. “I want to create something of my own — something that helps others.”
The Pursuit of the Impossible
To witness someone do the impossible reshapes our own sense of what’s achievable. Lara didn’t just succeed in two extreme fields — she did it at the same time. That isn’t just talent. It’s a belief. And belief is a skill!
Her life is a philosophical argument against compromise. In a world that tells us to pick a lane, Lara chose all of them. And when people said it couldn’t be done, she used that as fuel.
Her story invites us to reframe our own limitations. Maybe we don’t have to choose. Maybe striving for “all of it” isn’t naïve — it’s revolutionary.
“I always want more. That’s just who I am.”
Lara admits that she lives in extremes. Her mantra, “1% better every day,” is a survival mechanism and a guiding light. She doesn’t avoid vulnerability, she uses it. “Making mistakes is part of life. The most important thing is how you move on.”
That belief was forged in failure. After her loss at the Rio 2016 Olympics, she didn’t just train harder — she rebuilt herself from the inside out. With a sports psychologist, she analyzed every detail: nutrition, psychology, physical training, hormonal cycles. Nothing was left to chance. “I had to know why it didn’t work and make sure it never happened again.”
This mindset became her engine — not perfection, but adaptation. Each mistake became a lesson. Each setback, a system. Lara treated her body and mind like a high-performance ecosystem. That clarity, that honesty with herself, made all the difference in Paris. She came not just to compete, but to finish what she started.
Her discipline also exacts a price. Her relationship with footballer Lea Schüller ended in the shadow of Olympic training. But the story, which they shared openly, resonated with thousands of LGBTQ+ youth across Europe. “People wrote us saying our story saved them. That gave us faith.”
Lara doesn’t draw a line between emotion and performance. She lets them inform each other. And that may be her greatest strength of all.
Looking Ahead
Lara has one eye on LA 2028. And beyond that, she’s thinking about how to make an impact outside of sport and medicine. “I want to build something of my own—something that helps others.”
It’s not a five-year plan. It’s a mindset. Forward-looking. Purposeful. Zero compromise.
QuickFire Round:
Early mornings or late nights? Late nights.
More stressful: exams or Olympic finals? By far – Olympic finals. But in hospital – to choose the right kind of medicine whether the patient will die or still be alive then i would say hospital!
Favorite place you’ve ever sailed? Marseille.
One word to describe your sailing style? Lead by gut feelings.
Song that gets you in the zone? “I Want It All” – Queen.
Dream collaboration? Porsche.
Secret obsession? Nutella and chocolate.
What’s always in your bag? Unfortunately, my phone.
Who would play you in a movie? Angelina Jolie.
If you weren’t a sailor or doctor? A businesswoman earning a ton of money.
Personal motto? Escape the ordinary.
Medal, degree, or love? Why not all three together? 😉
Some people wait for permission. Lara Vadlau doesn’t. She’s rewritten the rules of what’s possible — proving that the highest levels of performance don’t require compromise. They require vision, audacity, and the courage to want it all.