UVA swimmers win record 11 Olympic medals

In medal counts for countries that swam at the summer Paris Olympics, Cavalier Nation would rank fourth, tying Canada and outperforming Léon Marchand’s France.

University of Virginia swimmers won 11 medals in eight different events—five gold, five silver and one bronze. Previously, in any combination of sports, Virginia had never won more than five at a games.

Kate Douglass (Col class of ’23, Grad class of ’28) won UVA’s first-ever gold for an individual swimming event. It came in the women’s 200-meter breaststroke, where Douglass swam 2:19.24 to break her own American record.

She won silver in the women’s 200-meter individual medley. And she medaled in two relays—getting gold for participating in the preliminary round of the USA women’s victorious 4 x 100-meter medley and silver for swimming in the finals of the women’s 4 x 100-meter free.

During the semifinals in the women’s 100-meter butterfly, Gretchen Walsh (Com class of ’25) set a new Olympic record of 55.38. But she couldn’t replicate it in the finals, where she took silver. (The gold medalist couldn’t match Walsh’s earlier time either.)

Walsh continued to improve on her 100 fly over subsequent days. She swam it in both the mixed (composed of two men and two women) and the women’s 4 x 100 medley relays, where she helped Team USA win two golds and set two world records. In the women’s medley, her 55.03 split tied the women’s world record. She also swam a leg of the women’s 4 x 100-meter free relay to get a silver.

With four medals apiece, Douglass and Walsh each broke basketball great Dawn Staley’s (Col class of ’92) UVA record of three Olympic prizes, spread across 12 years. No Wahoo had previously won more than two at a single games.

Paige Madden (Educ class of ’21) helped USA win silver in the women’s 4 x 200-meter free relay. She won bronze in the women’s 800-meter free with a personal best 8:13.00, hanging within two seconds of American Olympic legend Katie Ledecky and her Australian rival Ariarne Titmus.

Like Douglass, breaststroker Emma Weber (Col class of ’26) picked up a gold for swimming in the preliminaries of the women’s 4 x 100 medley relay.

In a heartbreaker, officials disqualified Alex Walsh (Col class of ’24) from bronze in the women’s 200 IM, her only event. She had prematurely flipped over to her stomach in the transition from back to breast. It allowed Australia’s Kaylee McKeown to medal instead. A year earlier, at the World Aquatics Championships in Japan, McKeown had to forfeit the same event for the same violation, easing Walsh’s path to silver that year.

Elsewhere, Heidi Long (Col class of ’19) won bronze as part of Great Britain’s women’s eight rowing team. Emily Sonnett (Col class of ’15) helped the U.S. women’s soccer team earn a gold medal in their match against Brazil. Pien Dicke, who attended UVA as part of the Class of 2021, also won gold as part of the Netherlands field hockey team. That upped UVA’s medal count to 14.