Orlando's Olympians

  Guest Article by Megan Lawrence


  

In the past year I have become an ex-pat of sorts from the Western New York area, and have been living in Orlando, Florida. Recently, I decided to get to know the City Beautiful's hometown heroes, and if you will all indulge me I'll keep you posted on their work in Rio over the next few weeks.

 

Marvin Bracy hails from the city of Orlando, and will be competing in Track and Field. He played football for FSU from 2011 to 2013, at which point he left the team to pursue track professionally. During the trials at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon Bracy placed third in men's 100m sprint with a time of 9.98, just .05 off from his personal record. Bracy will begin competition on August 13th when preliminaries and early rounds take place.

 

Katelin Snyder will be leading USA Rowing's highly favored Women's Coxed 8 as coxswain this year. She began rowing at Winter Park High School, just outside of the city of Orlando and went on to cox for the University of Washington. Snyder has four gold medals from the Rowing World Championships; Rio will be her first Olympic appearance. Snyder is also engaged to Nareg Guregian, who will be rowing for the US in the men's coxless pair.

 

Matt Kuchar, also from Winter Park, is spending the end of this week competing in the Traveler's Championship before heading to Rio. Kuchar has been a professional golfer since 2000 and is ranked 20th overall in the official world golf ranking. He has seven PGA titles, and will be joined by on the men's team by Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler, and Patrick Reed as golf returns to the Games for the first time in 112 years. Fun fact: the course that will be used in Rio is located on a piece of land that is home to 30-40 capybaras, as well as a host of other wildlife.

 

We look forward to keeping up with Marvin, Katelin, and Matt in the upcoming weeks, as well as the rest of the players of the XXXI Olympiad.

 

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Megan Lawrence