The United States Olympic team has officially qualified its first athlete for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, with 17-year-old swimmer Katie Grimes nabbing a coveted spot on Saturday.
Grimes, the U.S.’s youngest athlete at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, earned the unique distinction after placing third in the open-water 10km at the world swimming championships in Fukuoka, Japan, on Saturday morning.
The thrilling competition saw Grimes narrowly capture a bronze medal, and the last Olympic qualifying berth, with a time of 2:02:42.30 following an intense photo finish. The teenage standout slapped the board one tenth of a second before the Netherlands’s Sharon van Rouwendaal and Brazil’s Ana Marcela Cunha–the 2016 and 2020 women’s 10km Olympic gold medalists, respectively.
