Above photo courtesy of Paris 2024 Olympic Games. All photos courtesy of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
Seven Triangle Athletes Will Participate in the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics Games
By Kyle Marie McMahon
It’s finally time! The Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games takes place today. Featuring 329 events across 32 sports, the Games not only showcase elite athletes from around the world (this year has 10,714 athletes representing 206 countries) but also bring people together across divisions of nationality and heritage.
Seven athletes with ties to the Triangle will take part in this year’s games. Here’s a little more information about each of them and when you can watch their event(s).
Katharine Berkoff (Swimming)
Berkoff graduated from NC State this spring where she was a 30-time All-American, 6-time ACC Champion and 5-time NCAA Champion swimmer. She is a three-time gold medalist at the World Championships and won two gold medals at the Summer World University Games in 2019, one in the 100-meter backstroke. This was the event she excelled at in college and the one she’ll return to in Paris. The heats will take place July 29 at 5 a.m.
Ryan Held (Swimming)
Berkoff’s fellow NC State alumnus Ryan Held will compete in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay for Team USA. Held won gold in this event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the same year he helped NC State (and the ACC as a whole) earn its first NCAA relay title with the same event. He specializes in sprint-style events and has won five additional gold medals at the World Championships. The relay heats take place on July 27 at 5 a.m.
Andrew Capobianco (Diving)
Capobianco attended Holly Springs High School before heading to Indiana University where he won three NCAA Championships in 3-meter diving. In 2019, he won three bronze medals in separate diving events at the World Championships and Pan American Games. He took home a silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games for 3-meter synchronized diving. For the 2024 games, he will return to the 3-meter springboard. The preliminaries will start on August 6 at 4 a.m.
Emily Fox (Soccer)
UNC alumna Fox plays right back for Arsenal in the Women’s Super League and will be a part of the US Women’s national soccer team. While playing soccer at UNC, she was the All-ACC first team and All-America selection, and she was drafted as the first overall pick in the 2021 NWSL Draft. She played for the NC Courage in 2023 and has been a part of the national team since 2015. The first game of the group stage was on July 25 versus Zambia, but you can catch the US playing Germany at 3 p.m. on July 28 and playing Australia on July 31 at 1 p.m.
North Carolina Courage (Soccer)
The Cary-based women’s professional soccer team saw two of its current members head to Paris. Goalkeeper Casey Murphy has been with the team since the 2021 season and will join Fox on the US Women’s National Team. Kerolin Nicoli Israel Ferraz, named NWSL Most Valuable Player in 2023, will play forward for her home country, Brazil.
Desmond Jackson (Running)
Durham native Jackson will return to the Paralympic Games when they begin on August 28 in Paris. He competed in Rio de Janeiro at the 2016 games in three separate events, including the long jump. This year, he qualified for the 100-meter T63 by finishing in 12.14 seconds, just .09 seconds behind the record in that category. (T63 is the classification for athletes with a single leg above the knee amputation who run with a prosthesis.) The first round of the 100-meter event is set to start on September 1 at 1 p.m.
