Top Performances by the Women of Team USA in 2024

If the women of Team USA were their own country at the Olympic Games, they would have placed third. This summer they won 67 Olympic medals and 56 Paralympic medals. Here are just some of the record-breaking, streak-extending, and best-ever performances by the women who make up Team USA.

In search of their third-straight gold medal, the U.S. women's sitting volleyball team flipped the script from its first game against China to end its quest with the ultimate reward. The squad dispatched its rivals, three sets to one, to take the top spot on the podium once again. “A three-peat is just crazy,” captain Monique Matthews said postgame. “We’re so proud of ourselves. Our family came out for this game and they cheered hard. We just couldn’t be more proud.”

Clinching set four did not come without some adversity. Behind a rowdy crowd, the U.S. led 20-17 as China took a timeout. The call appeared to work in China’s favor, as they closed the gap to 22-20. Nicky Nieves and Katie Holloway-Bridge managed to bring the U.S. within one of the victory. However, China stopped the celebration twice, forcing the U.S. to call a timeout to regroup.

“It’s just reminding us to stay present,” Kaleo Maclay said of the team’s conversations during timeouts. “That’s what we always try to end timeouts with – being in the moment. You are taking a moment to reconnect with your team, and then go out and do what you need to do.”  

The mindset worked, as the U.S. sealed the deal with Bridge’s slam.

“It was incredible,” Maclay said when she saw the ball hit the floor for the final point. “I still can’t even understand it all yet. I’m just in awe. I’m in awe of our team. I’m in awe of our teamwork, and I really just can’t believe it.”

The crowd was the final piece of the puzzle that fit perfectly for the U.S. Behind chants of “USA, USA,” Maclay and several other athletes stated that Paris has had one of the best atmospheres of their careers.

“It was amazing,” Maclay said. “It was so loud. I think this is what we had always hoped for the Paralympics. It is getting better and better every Games.”

After first-time Olympian Gretchen Walsh narrowly missed out on the bronze medal in the 50m free — coming in one-hundredth of a second behind China’s Yufei Zhang (24.20) — the 21-year-old went on to swim the penultimate leg in the women’s 4x100 medley relay, winning gold and setting a new world record in the process. 

Swimming rival Australia followed behind with the silver and a time of 3:53.11, with China rounding out the podium (3:53.23).

“It was tough, obviously, seeing fourth by 0.01,” Walsh said about her second miss at these Games by a small margin. “That always stings, but I was proud of my race, regardless.”

Earlier in the week, she was on her way to winning the 100m butterfly — after setting a new Olympic record in her first heat the day before — but lost the top podium spot by four one hundredth of a second. The gold went to her medley relay teammate, Torri Huske.

“I knew that I had an even bigger, better opportunity to be on top of the podium in the relay,” Walsh said. “I just did what I did last night (after finishing second in the 50m semifinal heat): move on quick and put out the best possible time I could for these ladies.”

Rounding out the quartet was Lilly King and Regan Smith, who collectively swam away with the gold with a time of 3:49.63, more than three seconds ahead of Australia and People’s Republic of China. 

King — a three-time Olympian — has medaled in this event for the past three Games, and last took silver at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 along with Smith and Huske. She was also a part of the team at the Olympic Games Rio 2016 who won gold.

“It’s cool to be a part of that relay [team] and watch it get faster and faster, with pretty much the same people,” King said, sharing that it was “an awesome way to cap off the meet.”

The win marked the fifth gold for the U.S. women swimmers — six if you include the mixed relay. An impressive feat considering the total golds won by Team USA Swimming was eight. 

In the end, the U.S. came away with the most gold medals and the most overall medals, 10 ahead of Australia’s 18.         

Reaching the podium never gets old for Tatyana McFadden.

The legendary athlete hit another milestone in her game-changing career after taking silver in the women’s 100-meter T54 event held in the evening session of Para track & field events Wednesday night. The medal marks McFadden’s 20th career Paralympic track & field medal, tying the U.S. record for the most medals in a single Paralympic sport in U.S. history.

“I’m definitely going to take tonight to enjoy it,” McFadden said, noting that she has a few more events to go while in Paris. “I’m going to embrace the journey I’ve been on, getting this 20th Para track medal. It’s really quite amazing when looking at the longevity of it and to still be really competitive.

McFadden, who races in nearly all distances offered at the Paralympic Games (including the marathon), erupted off the starting line. However, she didn’t execute as well as she had hoped in the middle of the sprint. The unfortunate error led to Belgium’s Lea Beykula passing her over the final 40 meters to claim the top spot on the podium. Finland’s Amanda Kotaja placed third.

“I wish I executed a little bit more with having longer arms,” McFadden said. "It’s been very competitive all season between the three of us, and you can’t make any mistakes because it’s so short. But, I’m really happy to get a medal.”

The 35-year-old who calls Baltimore, Maryland, her hometown also holds one medal from the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, giving her a career Paralympic medal total of 21. With a career spanning seven consecutive Paralympic Games, McFadden noted how incredible it was to be competing in front of a sellout crowd.

Wrestling in a new weight class in Paris, Elor was unseeded in the 2024 Olympic tournament. In making it to the gold-medal finals, she dispatched three opponents, including 2023 world champion Buse Cavusoglu Tosun of Turkey, 10-2, and a rapid-fast 10-0 technical fall over North Korea’s Sol Gum Pak in the semifinals. Cavusoglu Tosun went on to win Olympic bronze in Paris.

“I was like I can't believe this is real, I can't believe life is real,” said Elor after she advanced to the gold medal match. “Because that little girl that started wrestling at four years old is still inside of me. And she's just looking out, like, what is happening right now?”

Facing Zhumanazarova for gold, Elor knew what she was in for; she had faced the 24-year-old Kyrgyzstani athlete at international training camps in tough bouts — something Elor kept in mind during the gold-medal bout.

“I also trusted my improvement in my abilities,” she explained. “I know that she's an extremely solid, strong wrestler, so my mindset going into the match was to be patient and to stay in good position and to trust in my style of wrestling and in my skills.”

And Elor is not done yet. Her number one goal besides becoming an Olympic champion is to compete in the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028.

“I am born and raised in California,” she said, “so to have the opportunity to compete and represent not only my country, but my state, is incredible. I have been excited ever since I heard about it.”

The performance is the best for a U.S. Para Equestrian team since the Los Angeles 1984 Paralympic Games, and the first time in U.S. history that riders have earned a medal in Grades I, II and III during the individual championship test dressage event.

Veteran U.S. Equestrian athletes Roxie Hart and Rebecca Trunnell were part of the squad that secured bronze in the team event three years ago in Tokyo. Fiona Howard rounded out the team in Paris. However, Hart, a now five-time Paralympian, noted that her first-ever individual medal is even more special to her.

“I feel like I’m in a dream. I feel like I’m going to have to wake up here in a minute,” Hart said. “…From how hard we fought in Tokyo for that (team) bronze medal, and then over the last four years, our team has developed so much.

“We’ve put in so much, and to have it actually to come together in the moment, in the rain, on the day that we needed it to, it was so surreal.”

When asked about why the U.S. has started these Games so well, Trunnell said that it all came down to the team’s training.

“We’ve all been working so hard,” Trunnell said. “It’s nice to see pay off.”

Trunnell’s experience with horses can be traced back to her childhood. So, the veteran rider said the crowd changes from Tokyo to Paris did not affect her focus to perform her best.

“When I ride, it’s me and my horse,” she explained. “That’s all I think about.”

The number two ranked American women — which consisted of Lee Kiefer, Jackie Dubrovich, Lauren Scruggs and Maia Weintraub — were looking for payback after the Italians kept them off the podium in Tokyo, losing 23-45 in the bronze medal match.

After an exciting nine rounds — where the Americans came out on top every time — it was the individual foil silver medalist, Scruggs who touched for the last point to take the gold and complete the match with a score of 45-39.

“You never think it will happen so it was crazy to just do that,” Scruggs said during a press conference following the bout. “To get that last winning touch, it was surreal.”

Fellow first-time Olympian Weintraub — who subbed in on the third round — wasn’t nervous about coming in during a final as she said she is used to it.

“They love to do that to me,” the 21-year-old joked, “just throw me in. I had a lot of faith in myself and in my team and I know we’ve been working for this for a really long time.”

This is the U.S.’s second Olympic medal in this event, but the first gold after Team USA took silver in the Olympic Games Beijing 2008.

Before first-time Paralympian Noelle Malkamaki stepped foot into the shot put ring at Stade de France, she already held the world record in the women’s shot put F46. However, that wasn’t good enough for the Decatur, Illinois, native. She wanted more.

“I want to push that record so far out there that nobody can touch it,” she said before her debut.

“It was more overwhelming than I expected,” Malkamaki said with a laugh about how it felt getting her medal on the podium. “I think it’s a moment that I’ve thought about for a long time, just what it would feel like. It was more grand than you would expect.”

The 23-year-old was so confident that she knew her fourth attempted would be a world record even before it landed.

“I felt it mid-throw,” Malkamaki remarked. “My legs felt great today. I actually did a lift this morning and felt strong. I felt powerful. So, in that one throw, I was like, ‘yeah, there’s power behind this one. It’s going far.”

It is the first time anyone in the women’s F46 class has thrown over 14 meters in competition. Coincidentally, Malkamaki also became the second woman to do so after throwing for 14.00 meters on her sixth and final attempt.

“(Manifestation) does amazing things for your confidence,” Malkamaki said. “I think that working with these goals that we set for ourselves – waking up every day and telling myself that I’m going to work hard so I can get just a little bit better today – that’s the thing that grows your self-confidence.”

Kristen Faulkner became the first American woman to win gold in both track and road cycling. Her win, was also the first in 40 years by an American woman.

In 2020, Faulkner quit her investment banking job in San Francisco and decided — with the support of her family — to focus full-time on pro cycling. Since she was seven years old, she had dreamed of competing in the Olympic Games.

The native of Homer, Alaska, was soon was turning heads with her cycling results on the road, with stages wins in the world’s biggest races, including the women’s versions of the Giro d’Italia, Vuelta Espana, and Tour de Suisse.

Although she had tried track cycling in 2019 at a velodrome in San Jose, California, Faulkner did not attend a national team camp until winter 2022, then returned to a camp in November 2023 and has been “pretty full gas on track since then,” she said. Although she qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games in track cycling, Faulkner just missed qualifying for the road team and only made it after Taylor Knibb gave up her spot in the road race (to focus on triathlon).

“I’m still pinching myself,” said Faulkner, who took up cycling in 2016 after taking a free clinic in New York City’s Central Park; she didn’t try track cycling for another three years. “I think I’ll wake up in a week, and it still won’t feel real. It’s going to take a long time for this to sink in.”

For USA Cycling, a gold in team pursuit is the medal that the track program has been pursuing since 2012. The ideal team pursuit squad has been “meticulously put together year after year,” Jennifer Valente explained.

Raleigh-Crossley was declared eligible to compete at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in the S9 Para Swimming classification.

“Watching the Tokyo Olympics is when I learned that I was eligible, so worked with my doctors for the next six months to get ready to get back in the pool and we’ve been on this roller coaster ride since,” she said.

Her goals are greater than just gold medals.

“I hope the impact that I can make on the Paralympic movement would far exceed what I could do in the Olympics,” Raleigh-Crossley said. “Now I have this awesome opportunity to do a lot more good for a lot more people – hopefully bring a lot more people into the Parlaympic movement who are like me, who didn’t know we were eligible.

“We see a lot of amputees, a lot of vision-impaired, you don’t usually see a lot of people who are ambulatory wheelchair users, who use a various multitude of mobility aids.

“Hopefully, more people can know that they’re eligible for the Paralympics by seeing me – they’ll see me walking sometimes, they’ll see me in a chair sometimes and I think that broadens the idea of what is a disability, what is a Paralympian.

“I think the good that I’ll be able to do for the Paralympic movement will far exceed what I could have done for the Olympics and I’m super grateful for that opportunity,” Raleigh-Crossley said.

“I just want to have fun – enjoy the moment and take it all in, with no expectations,” she said.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the first woman to break both the 52-second and 51-second barriers in the 400m hurdles, had broken the world record four times over the span of 13 months. The first time came in June 2021, when she broke the 52-second barrier with a time of 51.9 seconds. The second time came again that same year at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 when she defeated the previous gold medalist, Delilah Muhammad, by finishing in 51.46 seconds.

She broke her own world record at U.S. Olympic Trials in June of 2024 with a time of 50.65 seconds – the fifth time she would break a world record in the same event.

Now, she’s done it a sixth time. 

She doesn’t need crowd energy to rally the mental fortitude to trudge on at top speed over 400 meters. McLaughlin-Levrone’s Tokyo victory came in a near-empty stadium during the COVID-19 pandemic.

McLaughlin-Levrone’s improvement over short periods of time is stunning. She shaved nearly 1.5 seconds off her time in little more than three years, and Wednesday was her 25th birthday.

After skating past the 52- and 51-second marks, McLaughlin-Levrone has a chance to do the unthinkable.

“To be honest with you, there's a few things I feel like I could have cleaned up,” McLaughlin-Levrone said. “But when you're in the moment, you're not really thinking about all of that…When I crossed the line I was definitely grateful for that time. I was hoping it was a little faster, but like I said, I’m sure there’s some things in the middle that we can clean up.”

Smoothing out the middle of her race will be key if McLaughlin-Levrone intends to pursue the 49-second barrier, which she’s stated is an ambition of hers.

“I do think 49 is possible and I do think the talent in front of you can do that,” McLaughlin-Levrone said in a press conference following Thursday’s session of competition. “…I don’t know when it’s possible but it’s out there for sure.”