Kenny Bednarek; 2024 US Olympic Team Trials-Day 9; Photo courtesy of USATF
Three Wisconsinites Medaled at the Paris Olympics
While 11 athletes from our state competed, these three brought medals home from France.
BY Rich Rovito
The Summer Olympics in Paris concluded with the closing ceremony on Sunday after 19 days of spectacular competition. Eleven Wisconsinites, including six from Southeastern Wisconsin, represented Team USA in the games.
Medals were hard to come by for the Wisconsin contingent.
Sprinter Kenny Bednarek of Rice Lake, who won a silver medal in the 200-meter race at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, grabbed another silver in the same event this year. Bednarek also finished seventh in the 100-meter event.
The 25-year-old Rice Lake High School graduate was also involved in one of the more shocking and frustrating events of the Summer Games when the 4×100-meter relay team, which had high hopes for a gold medal, was disqualified after a botched handoff between Bednarek and Christian Coleman.
Tyrese Haliburton, a two-time NBA All-Star who attended Oshkosh North High School, where he led the Spartans to a 26-1 record and a state championship, earned a gold medal as a member of the Team USA basketball team.
The Wisconsin Gatorade Player of the Year in 2018, who currently plays in the NBA for the Indiana Pacers, averaged 2.7 points per game while playing 8.7 minutes per game during Team USA’s gold-medal run. Haliburton didn’t play in the USA’s gold medal matchup against France.
Haliburton took to X (formerly Twitter) to make a humorous post about his Olympic experience:
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West Bend native Nick Rusher, 25, was part of the bronze-medal winning Team USA squad in the men’s eights rowing competition. It marked the first medal in the event for the United States since the 2008 Beijing Games. Rusher’s parents rowed in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics and met while on the national team.
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Bednarek, Haliburton and Rusher were the lone medalists from the Badger State in Paris.
Eau Claire native Mary Theisen-Lappen narrowly missed out on a bronze medal in weightlifting, finishing fifth in the superheavyweight class (178 pounds) after totaling 604 pounds from a snatch of 262 and clean and jerk of 342.
Others with Wisconsin ties who competed at the Summer Olympics included: Hartland fencer Margherita Guzzi Vincenti; Kenosha’s Maria Laborde in judo; rowers Lauren O’Connor of Belleville, Sophia Vitas of Franklin and Madeleine Wanamaker of Neenah; wrestler Payton Jacobson of Elkhorn; and sailor Stephanie Roble of East Troy.
The U.S. led all nations with 257 medalists, and the total medal count of 126 is the most ever for a U.S. team in a non-boycotted Games outside the U.S., topping the previous high of 121 from the Rio Games in 2016. The only Games where the U.S. exceeded this total were at Olympic Games held on U.S. soil in 1984 (Los Angeles with 174 medals) and 1904 (St. Louis with 239).
“Team USA once again confirmed that when the biggest moments arrive, they will be ready to compete, and I am so proud of the way the Team USA athletes supported each other as they prepared, performed and celebrated,” Rocky Harris, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee chief of sport performance and Team USA’s chef de mission for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, said in a statement.
The 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles.