When the 2024 Olympic Games begin in Paris, France, next week, there will be a few athletes competing to bring a medal back to their homes in Fairfax County.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee announced on July 10 that 529 athletes have qualified to represent Team USA at the Olympics, including McLean rower Claire Collins, Clifton soccer player Griffin Yow, and diver Greg Duncan and fencer Hadley Husisian, who are both from Oakton.
The games will begin next Wednesday, July 24 and continue until Sunday, Aug. 11. The opening ceremony will take place on Friday, July 26, airing live on NBC at 1:30 p.m. with a primetime encore at 7:30 p.m.
Claire Collins
A 27-year-old who lists baking and traveling among her hobbies, Collins also competed in volleyball and swimming in high school. However, Princeton University recruited her for her rowing, and she went on to win its award for top senior female athlete in 2019, according to her Team USA bio.
This will be Collins’s second Olympic experience after she competed in the Women’s Four in Tokyo, Japan, in 2021, where her team finished fourth. At the 2022 Rowing World Championships, she won bronze in a pair with Madeleine Wanamaker — who will be joining her in Paris.
This time around, Collins will compete in the Women’s Eight event, which is scheduled for a qualifying race on July 29.
She told WTOP that she’s “appreciative of all the women that came before us,” including past crews that won gold medals for the U.S. in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
Greg Duncan
According to his bio, Duncan began diving “just for fun” when he was 12 and attributes his success since then to “hard work, enjoying the sport and a little bit of luck.”
Now 25, he attends Purdue University after graduating from James Madison High School in Vienna in 2017 and later transferring from the University of North Carolina. In addition to coaching summer league diving, he’s a member of Purdue’s Spanish Honor Society and hopes to become fluent in the language.
WJLA reported that Duncan faced some setbacks on his journey to his first Olympics after struggling at the U.S. National Championships in December, but he and diving partner Tyler Downs ultimately eeked out a win in the men’s synchronized 3-meter final at the Olympic Team Trials on June 18.
“I was just trying to focus on the practice cues that we have been working on every single day for the past 8-10 years and keeping myself as calm and composed as possible because it’s an emotional atmosphere,” Duncan said after the trials.
At the Olympics, the men’s synchronized 3-meter springboard event will be determined on Aug. 2.
Hadley Husisian
Fairfax County has another Princetonian representing it at the Olympics. A graduate of the Potomac School in McLean, Husisian won the Junior Women’s Épée Championship in 2022 before attending Princeton and becoming the 2023 Ivy épée champion.
With a second title in 2023, the 20-year-old became the first Team USA athlete, male or female to repeat as a junior épée world champion, according to USA Fencing.
She has credited the TV show “iCarly” with introducing her to fencing when she was 10, telling the Daily Princetonian that she “immediately” committed herself to the sport. She initially trained at the Fencing Sports Academy in Fairfax City before moving to Springfield’s Elite Fencing Academy.
At the Olympics, Husisian will compete in the women’s individual and team épée events, which will start qualifying rounds on July 27, a day after her 21st birthday.
“This is my first time going for the Olympics, so all new experiences,” Husisian said during a USA Fencing media day. “There are definitely some ups and downs. I had some rough periods at the start of the season, but I ended up winning the December North American Cup and then getting bronze at the Doha Grand Prix. And that’s how I got here!”
Griffin Yow
Born in Clifton in 2002, Yow signed with D.C. United on March 19, 2019 when he was just 16 years old, playing his first Major League Soccer game a month later. After 36 games, he was transferred to the Belgian professional soccer team KVC Westerlo in 2022.
Now 21, Yow cites French footballer Kylian Mbappe as his biggest athletic inspiration, and he owns two pugs named Pele and Puma, according to his Team USA bio.
He will be a forward on the men’s soccer team, which qualified for the Olympics for the first time since 2008 and will face off with its host, France, for its first match on July 24.
“I would describe it as exciting, relentless and energetic,” Yow said of his playing style in an Instagram Q&A for the U.S. Youth National Team, adding that he’s most looking forward to “bringing home gold.”
