Getty Image / Lintao Zhang
Team USA Swimming is usually one of the big winners for Team USA at a Summer Olympic Games in terms of gold medals. But, swimming Golds have been few and far between for USA Swimming so far at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France.
With the team struggling mightily to bring home gold medals, comments that Team USA star Lily King made about how the public should perceive silver and bronze medals are resurfacing.
Back in 2021, during the Tokyo Olympics, the breaststroker offered her thoughts on medals that aren’t gold
“Just because we compete for the United States, and maybe we have extremely high standards for this sort of thing, that doesn’t excuse the fact that we haven’t been celebrating silver and bronze as much as gold,” she said.
Ironically, the USA dominated that Olympics in the pool. they finished with 11 gold medals and 30 total medals to lead all countries in both categories. But, that was less than the 16 golds the team had in both London 2012 and Rio 2016. Part of that is certainly due to some top USA athletes having retired in the GOAT Michael Phelps and arguably the second-best Men’s American Swimmer ever, Ryan Lochte. But, Team USA was clearly feeling the pressure then.
If they were feeling the pressure from lack of golds then, I can’t imagine what it’s like now. Through Wednesday, They have just three swimming golds, coming from the Men’s 4×100 freestyle and individual wins by Tori Huske in the 100m Butterfly and Katie Ledecky in the event she’s owned for over a decade now, the 1500m freestyle.
They have some very good gold medal opportunities coming up in the pool, as action continues at La Defense Arena through Sunday. But, it seems fairly unlikely that they will get to double digits.
The last time the Americans did not win double-digit gold medals in swimming was in Seoul in 1988. That streak seems in serious jeopardy.
King, who won two golds in Rio, and two silvers and a bronze in Tokyo, has not found the podium in Paris. She missed the podium in the 100m breaststroke by .01. She still has medal chances in the 200m breaststroke and the 4×100 medley replay, though. She has said this will be her last Olympics, so let’s hope she can find her way on the podium.