Dotsie Bausch on Overcoming Incredible Adversity and Promoting a More Compassionate Plant-Based Diet

In 2012, Dotsie Bausch made history, becoming the oldest Olympian in the history of her discipline, team pursuit track cycling, netting a silver medal for Team USA at the age of 39. This was the crowning moment of her cycling career, which also included eight US national championships and two Pan American gold medals. While the path to the top for all athletes is never easy, Dotsie took an extremely long and difficult route, one that saw her struggle with severe eating disorders, substance abuse, and attempts to take her own life.

A former high-paid runway model, Dotsie developed anorexia in her 20s, which later progressed into life-threatening bulimia. However, she says that her eating disorders didn’t start out of a desire to feel attractive or become thinner. Instead, restricting food intake was the method she chose to numb her inner pain caused by insecurity, self-loathing, and fear of failure. She believed that withholding nourishment was a way for her to demonstrate control over her urges, and that was validated by the praise she received from other people who were unaware of her internal struggles.

That desire to not eat eventually took hold of her life, and her body started withering away. She purged any food she ate, just to deny her body the calories and give her the feeling that she was her own body’s master. Constantly going in and out of hospital, Dotsie says she felt like a ghost, feeling incredibly numb and disconnected, not only from herself, but from every loving, caring human in her life. She even tried committing suicide several times, including running into a busy interstate highway, only being saved by the drivers’ reflexes and her survival instinct kicking in.

Eventually, Dotsie realized that things had to change, so she fully committed to therapy, which she had not taken seriously many times in the past. Because of her anorexia, she had also developed an addiction to exercise, and her counselor told her to hold off exercising to avoid getting triggered. When she eventually received clearance, she was advised to choose a new form of exercise unrelated to her previous experience, and she chose cycling.

According to Dotsie, getting into cycling was custom-made for her Type A personality, which is characterized by competitiveness and a desire to be in control. It’s these personality traits that manifested harmfully in her eating disorders, when she treated shedding pounds like a competitive sport. But, with cycling, she found a healthy outlet for her personality, and she took training very seriously. She is currently writing a prescriptive memoir on her journey, aptly titled Don’t Quit Yet, which will be released in time for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.

Having gotten into competitive cycling very late at 26 years old, Dotsie was at a disadvantage, as most elite athletes start training in their discipline at a very young age. However, she did not let this stop her, and she began racking up wins and championships, culminating with the silver medal win at the London Olympics.

In 2015, Dotsie revealed that her Olympic medal-winning ride was powered by a plant-based diet. She turned to a plant-based lifestyle in 2009 out of ethical reasons and compassion for the animals subjected to the meat and dairy industries. At first, her team was worried about how the switch would affect her performance. Instead, she saw improvements in her endurance, stamina, and recovery with her new diet, and the podium finish put any and all doubts to rest. She was one of the athletes featured in the 2018 documentary film, The Game Changers, which had several big Hollywood and sports names attached as executive producers.

“I didn't just feel better – I performed better,” Dotsie said. “I was recovering better and faster after making the switch.”

Dotsie also founded Switch4Good, a nonprofit organization advocating for a dairy-free world and plant-based living. The organization launched in 2018 with a television commercial featuring six Olympians from four different countries who prove that cow’s milk is not part of a high-performance diet.

“The US Olympic Committee had been selling us this lie that we need cow’s milk to perform at our best, which is not only untrue, it's also dangerous for many athletes who are made sick by cow’s milk. It was high time we set the record straight,” Dotsie says.

Dotsie and her organization continuously work with health experts, athletes, policymakers, and progressive corporations to promote ethical lifestyles and widespread behavioral change related to how people eat.

“With a multi-faceted approach, Switch4Good battles big dairy by creating widespread change through our four pillars: improved human health, enhanced everyday performance, dietary justice, and planetary responsibility,” she says. “We seek to tell the public about the dangers of dairy consumption through innovative online and offline campaigns. We are fighting to give millions of underprivileged school children access to plant-based milk, as well as campaigning for corporations and sporting bodies to change their food policies. You can join us in spreading the dairy-free message at various big events across the US, letting millions know how ditching dairy helps the next generation to become healthier and happier.”