The 2024 Olympic Games kick off in Paris in just a few short days, and, as usual, Colorado will be well represented.
How well, you ask?
Colorado will have more athletes in these Games than 168 entire nations sent to the last Summer Olympics. We’ll have more athletes than states with twice — even three times! — as many people. We’ll have more athletes competing just in track and field than Nebraska and Kansas combined are sending. (Ha Ha!)
Relative to our population size, we’re one of the greatest Olympian factories in the country.
Olympics 411
Starting: July 24 (first competitions); July 26 (opening ceremony)
Ending: Aug. 11
Location: Paris, France (8 hours ahead of Denver time)
How to watch: On television: NBC and its family of networks (USA, CNBC, Telemundo, etc.)
On streaming: Peacock (requires subscription) or NBCOlympics.com (may require cable verification)
Full schedule: NBCOlympics.com/schedule
These charts are based on the list of 592 Olympians that the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee released last week. We relied on the hometowns that athletes provided for that list — so don’t throw rotten tomatoes at us if your favorite Colorado athlete isn’t included here. And there likely are some who won’t be.
Mountain bike racer Savilia Blunk, for instance, lives in Durango. But the USOPC lists her hometown as Inverness, California, where she grew up. Tennis player Rajeev Ram, meanwhile, was born in Denver, but the USOPC gives his hometown as Carmel, Indiana, where he lives now.
And then there is Colorado-raised, Boston-based basketball player Derrick White, who isn’t on the list at all because he was only added to the Team USA roster as an injury replacement after its release.
What we’re saying is that what is already a great state for producing Olympians could be even greater if we ran the data just a little differently. And that’s some trivia definitely worth dropping at your next happy hour.
Colorado ranks sixth among states for the number of Olympians it’s sending to Paris.
That’s actually a decline from 2021, when the pandemic-delayed Summer Games were held in Tokyo. That year, Colorado sent 34 athletes as part of Team USA, ranking the state third.
Here’s where we really shine. Relative to our population size, Colorado ranks second for per capita Olympians — 4.42 Olympians per 1 million people. We’re, like, half of a Vermont rower away from holding the top spot.
Again, though, this is down from 2021, when Colorado was No. 1 with 5.9 Olympians per 1 million residents. the pandemic-delayed Summer Games were held in Tokyo. That year, Colorado sent 34 athletes as part of Team USA, ranking the state third.
This is higher than that of Team USA as a whole, which is 53% women.
The Summer Olympics are I-25-centric in Colorado. Of the three Olympians who do not live along the Front Range, two are mountain bikers from Durango — Riley Amos and Christopher Blevins — and the other is Edwards steeplechaser Valerie Constien.
This is almost the exact opposite of the Winter Games. In 2022, Colorado’s Winter Olympics delegation had only five athletes who lived on the Front Range. The remaining 18 lived in the mountains.
Colorado Springs is sending the most athletes to Paris among Colorado cities, with four. That’s partly due to the city’s famed Olympic Training Center, though there is growing concern that athletes are abandoning the center to train elsewhere.
No shocker here: Olympians are young. Colorado’s athletes range in age from 20 to 49, but most fall into the 22-30 age range.
The youngest athlete competing overall for Team USA is 16-year-old artistic gymnast Hezly Rivera from New Jersey, while the oldest is 59-year-old equestrian Steffen Peters of San Diego.
Speaking of old Colorado Olympians, this will be 49-year-old Keith Sanderson’s fourth Olympics. Sanderson, a wizard in the rapid-fire pistol event, is from Colorado Springs, where he was stationed at Fort Carson with the U.S. Army.
This would have been Sanderson’s fifth Olympics, but he was suspended for the Tokyo Games after making the team following a complaint of sexual misconduct, which Sanderson said was bogus and in retaliation for his own reporting of inappropriate relationships within USA Shooting. The organization denied that. The oldest is 59-year-old equestrian Steffen Peters of San Diego.
Track and field — that largest of tent poles for the Summer Games — has the most Coloradans, and the state’s prowess at developing women’s soccer superstars is also on display. But there are other sports with a more Colorado-specific flair, specifically sport climbing and mountain biking.
We don’t even have a chart for this because it’s a datapoint of one. There is one athlete in all of Team USA who is competing in two different sports — not different events within the same sport but actually two different sports.
All hail Taylor Knibb, a world-class triathlete from Boulder who also earned a spot on the U.S. cycling team in Paris.
John Ingold is a reporter for The Colorado Sun. His work appears frequently on-air at KUNC 91.5 FM and online at KUNC.org. Contact John at [email protected].
Source link : https://www.kunc.org/news/2024-07-25/summer-olympics-to-feature-26-athletes-from-colorado-competing-in-14-different-sports
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Publish date : 2024-07-25 16:28:00
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