By Lael Gilbert ’01

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From the opening ceremony to extinguishing the flame, the 2026 Winter Olympics showcased athletic grace, teeth-clenching grit, and blistering speeds. Fans watched the polished performances, but USU alum Jen Day saw the behind-the-scenes scramble — with a few more bumps on the ice than the audience saw via the networks.

Day is the sports dietitian for the U.S. Speedskating team. It’s one of the few non-coaching positions considered essential to the athletes’ success, and Day was on site in Italy, to ensure the 22 athletes under her care had access to the kinds of foods that could fuel them across the finish line. She also helped them avoid the culinary pitfalls many people grapple with when travelling abroad — keeping digestive systems fully functional and stomachs happily settled.

As settled as they might get, that is, while shooting across hard ice at 50 miles per hour and facing a bevy of world-class competitors with the world watching. The behind-the-scenes work to support Olympic athletes requires lots of preparation, flexibility, creativity, and vigilance — not everything always goes as planned.

“We had food safety issues to figure out, raw chicken and undercooked hamburger,” Day recalls. “And a last-minute change to the food contractors meant there was really no variety to meals for the entire three weeks we were in country.”

These issues could have meant disaster for the athletes whose lives are focused on these short competitions. So, like a short-track skater in the final lap, Day pivoted, jostled, and elbowed just a bit to keep the team fed. Her efforts included daily runs to a local grocery store and reliance on a pallet of supplies she’d packed and shipped from home. She didn’t have access to a kitchen, but she did have a griddle and she used it.

“Every day I was making, like, eight boxes of high-protein pancake mix with chocolate chips,” she says. “We were living off them for a while.”

She spent hours navigating unfamiliar aisles of Italian grocery stores, deciphering ingredients, tracking down and ordering foods the athletes could easily consume at training sessions and between competitions, and figuring out how to get it all through security at the venues. It wasn’t easy.

“Italian grandmas can be surprisingly aggressive,” she jokes. “I got whacked with handbags a few times. And grocery carts work differently in Italy. The wheels go in all directions so that you kind of drift.”

Day rode elevators with armfuls of batter-smeared bowls and greasy skillets, washing dirty dishes in a bathroom sink three floors below where she was cooking.

“It’s not as glamorous as you’d imagine,” she laughs.

She fully admits that she’s an over-preparer — a lesson learned during her first experience at the 2022 Beijing Games when COVID restrictions limited where visitors could travel. This time she packed six full suitcases of protein bars, chocolate chips, overnight oats and rice.

“In these situations, it’s better to have too many supplies than to miss something essential,” she explains. “These athletes have been working toward the moment for years, sometimes decades, and can get super stressed. The little things can make a difference, both physically and psychologically.”

For explosive sprint energy or long track endurance, Day fed the group for performance and recovery. Her academic experiences helped her understand and support the diverse bodies on the team with ages ranging from 17 to 36, both male and female, and from across the country. She also knows a lot about how these top-tier athletes think, having run the 400-meter for USU track while completing an undergraduate degree in dietetics. She also earned her doctorate in nutrition and food sciences at USU, with an emphasis in sports nutrition under the mentorship of Dr. Heidi Wengreen, who is now a department head.

“USU taught me more than just what to feed someone,” she says. “I learned to think critically and treat each athlete as an individual, each one a challenge to figure out and support.”

So, what’s the secret to eating like an Olympic champion? Day’s advice is — get ready for it — eat a good breakfast.

“Most people tend to eat light in the morning, and maybe something like a salad for lunch — then they’re starving and eat like crazy in the evening. But for good, solid, all-day energy you kind of have to flip that and frontload your day,” she explains. “When you do that, the calories tend to naturally even out, and you end up feeling better.”

Another piece of advice especially for female athletes — don’t demonize foods, especially carbohydrates, she says.

“Carbs are the body’s main fuel source when we are exercising,” she explains. “People sometimes want to leave them out, and it makes it a lot harder to feel good when they exert themselves. Then they struggle to sustain performance because they’re not eating enough to fuel their bodies and can’t keep the effort up. Athletes need to be sure to fuel themselves.”

Of course, evangelizing breakfast and nutrient balance is one thing. Doing it on the world’s biggest stage is another.

“The Olympics were the most exhilarating and exhausting experience I’ve ever been part of. It still feels surreal,” Day says.

“We always say a food science degree is broad enough, and practical enough that it can take you wherever you want to go,” Wengreen says. “For Jen, that was lucky enough to be twice to the Winter Olympics.”