Menu
On The Ground in Rio

U.S. Colleges Can Claim Allegiance With 1,100 Rio Olympians

Hungary's Katinka Hosszu (USC) and America's Maya DiRado (Stanford) came out of the U.S. college ranks
Getty Images
The American amateur sports system’s ripples are felt far and wide at the Summer Olympics, whether or not the athletes are wearing the red, white and blue.

Team USA proper is 554 strong, but another 433 international athletes have trained at and competed for American college teams at some point in their lives, according to a document created at the start of the Games by Sarah Wilhelmi, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s new director of collegiate partnerships.

In a separate count that includes incoming athletes too, the NCAA counted 1,108 total Olympians who can claim some kind of U.S. college allegiance. Counting the current foreign athletes alone, 56 countries in addition to the U.S. have NCAA athletes on their team. That’s about 10 percent of all Olympians and about a quarter of all countries here in Rio.

The NCAA says 168 current college athletes are here, including 118 international athletes.

Not surprisingly, after Team USA, Canada leads the list of current NCAA athletes in Rio with 20. Jamaica has eight, the Bahamas has seven, Hungary has six and host country Brazil has five. The foreign NCAA athletes are mostly in track and field and swimming, though water polo, soccer, golf and fencing also make the list.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2016/08/16/On-The-Ground-in-Rio/Foreign-athletes.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2016/08/16/On-The-Ground-in-Rio/Foreign-athletes.aspx

CLOSE