What do you say to the following?
1) You have competed in 7 previous US Women Champs, with 5th the best in 2016
2) This year, You are ranked 6th out of a field of 12
3) When you applied for leave of absence from work (you just managed to get the job!), your supervisor, a chess amateur player refused. So you resigned from the job.
4) In January your mother died of cancer at young age of 49
5) In final round, you are tied first with the defending champion who is playing with White while you have Black. She plays an opponent 173 Elo points lower while you play the 7th seed just 10 Elo points lower than you,
Yet, in the final round you managed to come up with a beautiful combination with a Q sac comprising nearly 10 moves while avoiding some obvious and less obvious lesser moves.
[most of the above taken from GM Yermolinsky's report
http://en.chessbase.com/post/sabina-foisor-is-2017-us-women-s-champion for Chessbase and also the live broadcast]
PS In the interview after the final game was finished and she was official champion, when asked about ...Rf6, she credited her fiancé, GM Eshan Moradiabadi and her coach with preparing her with calculation chess puzzles in training. Guess who her coach is? Clue: a famous author who has won all the major chess book awards and who is currently on a chess author promotion tour of India and Asia and whom ChessPubbers either love or hate.
PSII, I have to also add that the last round opponent of the defending champion, IM Paikidze, managed a record of sorts. WIM Jennifer Yu(15 yo) defeated the defending champion in the last round, and in earlier round defeated two former champions, GM Irina Krush and IM Anna Zatonskih (this was a very lucky win as Zatonskih blundered badly but a win is a win no matter how it came about), she is former World U12 Girls Champion (2014 World Youth), first girl from US to win gold in 27 years (since 1987).
She was 12th in US Champs in 2015, 8th in 2016, and in 2017, she is joint 4th.