On Set With Anna Hall at The Boca Raton

SI Staff | May 13, 2025

Anna Hall Athlete Interview /

Track and field athlete Anna Hall turned pro in 2022 when she signed with Adidas. The two-time World Champion has earned bronze and silver medals in the heptathlon event, in 2022 and ‘23, respectively, and Hall is the second-highest scoring American heptathlon athlete of all time. In an exclusive interview with SI Swimsuit from her photo shoot at The Boca Raton, the athlete disclosed that, in reality, learning to love the body that has won her championships was easier said than done.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, it's Anna Hall, and I'm on set for my 2025 SI Swimsuit photo shoot.

My earliest memories of track and field goes back to when my older sisters were doing it. I started asking when I was like five, and they were like, ‘No, like you're way too young to do this.’ Finally, when I was seven, my dad, I think he was just getting annoyed that I was asking so much was like, ‘Fine, you can try.’

And one of his friends that's a coach, she taught me how to high jump, which ended up becoming like one of my best events. So that's my earliest memory.

My body has changed a lot from track. Growing up I was always really naturally like slender, had a hard time putting on muscle, and I got really used to being skinny. And then I got to college and I realized that to be good, I needed to put on a lot of muscle. So there was definitely some growing pains in learning to be comfortable having a body that looks different.

I really credit my coaches and my sisters to constantly telling me like, no, your body is powerful, and look around at all these other female athletes. I had such great examples to look to and just see how strong they were. Yeah, they are strong. Like yes, they do have quads. Yes, they have arm muscles. Like I shouldn't be ashamed of that. 

I feel like a huge part of track is building yourself up. I always say that like my warmup is when I like grow an ego. I feel like I'm transforming from regular Anna to like, I need to be a bad “A”, and part of that I think is like looking really put together.

And I think you'll notice that with all of the track girls, like everyone's hair is done, everyone's nails are done. Everyone's got their best face of makeup on. And I just really feel like if you look good, and you feel like you look good, I feel more confident when I'm warming up, and it's just another way to tell myself that I've got this.

The Olympics were very bittersweet for one. It was my first one, so I was just thankful to be there. It was like a lifelong dream that came true, and so that's something that I'll always remember. But also I was coming in as kind of one of the favorites, and then I had knee surgery in January, which was super, super tough. So it was a very stressful situation. Definitely the hardest year of my life emotionally, for sure, just so much doubt in not knowing like what would happen if I'd even be in Paris. And then getting there, still holding onto the hope of like, we can still do this. Like we're not shooting for anything less than gold. At no point was I gonna concede and say we can't do it. And then, you know, to ultimately fall a little bit short, hurt a lot. I'm hoping it's gonna be that moment in my career that kinda like fuels a fire under me ahead of LA, and is gonna be that moment where God kind of just says not yet, but soon.

I hope people take away that being strong is powerful and that I hope that they see me through them. One thing I always hope to do, whether in sports pictures, is I just hope that I radiate through, um, whatever's being put out. So I hope they see me. And that's a wrap on my 2025 SI Swimsuit photo shoot.