The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
From the rugby pitch to the shot put circle and the gymnast’s vaulting table to the weightlifting platform, five athletes connected to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints won medals at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Aside from the medal counts, several athletes made history for their countries in weightlifting and track in an Olympics known for the yearlong pandemic-related delays and protocols. Here’s how these 15 athletes did at the Games.
- Semi Radradra, 29, helped the Fiji’s rugby sevens team defend its Olympic gold from 2016 in Rio. He was called in from England, where he plays with the Bristol Bears, and has been part of the Fijian national rugby league team.
- USA’s MyKayla Skinner, 24, won silver on the vault apparatus final in gymnastics. The Arizona native made the 2020 Olympic team as an individual. Although she qualified for the vault final, she was fourth behind two other Team USA athletes and out due to the two-per-country rule. She was back in the competition when a teammate withdrew from the vault final. She was an alternate in the 2016 Olympics and was a college champion at the University of Utah.
- USA’s Sarah Robles won bronze in over-87-kilogram weightlifting — the day after her 33rd birthday — and will go in the record books as the first U.S. woman to win two Olympic weightlifting medals. It’s her third Olympics and she won bronze in 2016 in Rio. She’s also the first American — woman or man — to win multiple Olympic weightlifting medals in 57 years, since 1964. During one of her lifts, the California native who lives in Houston, Texas, smiled and winked.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
