20-year-old Brooke Rabatou began climbing at age 1 and she's been passionate about the sport ever since! In fact, she scored the title for the youngest person in the world to climb 5.13b at age 9, the youngest female to climb 5.13d at 10, and the youngest female to climb 5.14b at 11. She became the first U.S. climber to qualify for the Olympics back in 2019 after she placed ninth overall at the Climbing World Championships.
Born in Boulder, Colorado, to two former world champion rock climbers, it makes sense that Rabatou developed a knack for scaling boulders. Her father is a three-time World Cup champion while her mother is a four-time U.S. champion and four-time World Cup champion. Because of her accomplishments, it's estimated that she's earned about $5 million from the sport.
If you haven't already guessed, Sam and Kristie Mewis are soccer siblings who have managed to use the power of sisterhood to make a name for themselves through soccer. They aren't twins, yet they might as well be given their similar drives for success. Both played as midfielders for the National Women's Soccer League before joining the United States national team. 30-year-old Kristie Mewis was awarded Young Female Athlete of the Year by the United States Soccer Federation in 2008, but don't feel too bad for her baby sister.
28-year-old Sam has won everything from the 2012 and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup to the U.S. Socer Female Player of the Year in 2020. In fact, the Mewis sisters scored all four goals against Colombia in January 2021 for an International Friendly match. After the U.S. Women's team lost to Sweden back in 2016 at Rio, they're revving up for a rematch in order to become the first team to win an Olympics gold medal following a World Cup title. With the Mewis sister's on our side, America has amazing chances on the international stage.
Noah Lyles is 23-years-old and ready to run the competition into the ground... Literally. He specializes in sprinting, holding the world record for the 300-meter dash from the 2017 USA Indoor Championships. He formerly competed at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, winning gold in the 200-meter dash. Obviously, he has a leg up on the other newbie athletes.
Lyles totes four other gold medals from his time competing at world competitions in 2016 and 2019, so it's easy to deduce that he's developed a taste for winning the top prizes. His resume is incredibly impressive for someone so young, but he'll be racing head-to-head with the best sprinters in the world in Tokyo. From Canada's Andre De Grasse to Nigeria's Divine Oduduru, Lyles will have to run faster than ever in order to make it to the top of the leaderboard.
Artistic gymnast Susina Lee will be an Olympian before she even steps foot on Auburn's campus in the fall! And she's sure to make her classmates proud in Tokyo as she already totes an impressive number of medals for her performance on the uneven bars at international competitions such as the 2019 World Championships and the USA Gymnastics National Championships.
We all know that 24-year-old Simone Biles is also revving up to sweep the floor in Tokyo, so it looks like Lee's fiercest competition is her very own U.S. team member. This won't be their first time facing off for gold, as they recently competed at the 2021 National Championships with Lee finishing second all-around behind Biles. However, she did manage to scrape past Biles' score on day two of the Olympic Trials.
Michael Andrew is the first swimmer to represent the United States for an individual breaststroke event at the Olympics, which is doubly impressive when you realize that he's only 22 and still coached by his father. Andrew became the World Champion in the 100-meter relay in 2016 but failed to qualify for the Rio games. Fortunately, he has scored multiple other championship titles since then and qualified to compete in the 2020 Summer Olympics.
In May 2021, Andrew beat his personal best in the 100-meter breaststroke, which also set a new U.S. Open record, a new Pro Swim Series record, and became the second-fastest time for the 100-meter in the history of U.S. swimming. If that wasn't enough, he went on the next day to break the Pro Swim Series record for the 100-meter butterfly. As for the Olympics, he qualified for seven individual events, including his signature 100-meter categories. What can't this guy do?
24-year-old A'ja Wilson is a power forward in the WNBA for the Las Vegas Aces after being drafted first overall in 2018. In college, she led the South Carolina Gamecocks to their first NCAA Women's Basketball Championship victory in 2017, going on to win the NCAA Basketball Tournament Most Outstanding Player award. After the Aces drafted her, she didn't disappoint her fans maintaining her winning streak all the way up to today.
She scored the SEC Player of the Year award three times, became the all-time leading female scorer in South Carolina history, and swept all of the National Player of the Year awards in 2018, including "best player in Women's College basketball." Good thing this 6-foot-five superstar is on her way to the Tokyo Olympics to represent America!
28-year-old Carissa Moore has nearly a decade on Caroline Marks, which translates to an even beefier resume. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Moore grew up around the waves. Her dad began teaching her to surf when she was five years old, and look where she is now! She snagged a number of amateur titles in her youth, including becoming the youngest champion at a Triple Crown of Surfing event at age 16. She and Marks know what it means to be history makers!
Once she became the youngest person to win a surfing world title when she was 18, people knew she meant business. She finally decided to compete in the Olympics after earning a spot in the Surfe4r's Hall of Fame and gracing the pages of National Geographic, Glamour, and SURFER magazine. Marks and Moore are both surfing powerhouses... May the best surfer win!
Xander Schauffele is a professional golfer from San Diego, California, who's ready to put for his life at his first Olympic games. This 27-year old saw enough success in his amateur career to turn pro in June 2015. This switch led him to two wins and Rookie of the Year during the 2016-17 PGA Tour as well as two wins and the President's Cup during the 2018-19 PGA Tour.
Given his age and experience with the club, Schauffele is worth $19 million. That's quite the fortune for someone whose never been to the Olympics before! Schauffele has to look out for the likes of Jon Rahm from Spain, Hideki Matsuyama from Japan, and the rest of his highly skilled U.S. team members.
Look out, Simone Biles! Another young gymnast is coming after your spot on the podium! Jordan Chiles is 20 years old and ready to prove herself at her first Olympic games. She continually finished third behind Biles and Susina Lee at the Olympic Trials, but we have high hopes for her vault and floor performances once the games are finally underway.
As the 2018 Pacific Rim champion on the vault and floor as well as the Stuttgart World Cup all-around bronze medalist, her skills on the floor shouldn't be taken lightly. Chiles joined the U.S. women's national gymnastics team back in 2013 when she was barely a teenager. What were you doing at 13? Yeah, that's what we thought. Being a girl boss that young has landed her a fortune of $1.5 million!
After dynamic duo Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings wiped the floor at back-to-back Olympics, any new beach volleyball stars have a lot to live up to. Alix Klineman seems up to the challenge after switching from indoor volleyball to the sandy trenches of outdoor competition. As a four-time All-American athlete at Stanford as well as the 2010 Volleyball Magazine national player of the year, this 31-year-old obviously dominated the indoor courts well enough that shifting to the beach did nothing to slow her roll.
Not only was she individually honored with Best Blocker awards in 2018 and 2019, but she was named to the 2018 Association of Volleyball Professionals team of the Year in 2018 alongside teammate April Ross. Her fiercest competition at the Tokyo Olympics is the Canadian national team made up of Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan. Even if she doesn't become the next Misty May-Treanor, she'll still have a million-dollar fortune under her belt.
28-year-old Sakura Kokumai has paved a way for herself in the world of karate. Her 2019 gold medal at the 2019 Pan American Games in Peru helped her to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. This will be her first excursion to the Olympics, but she has nothing to worry about given her impressive resume.
Back in 2012, she won bronze at the World Karate Championships in France as well as at the World Combat Games in Russia the following year. In 2014, she finally scored gold at the 2014 Pan American Sports Festival in Mexico, eventually leading her to the worldwide stage. Her net worth isn't widely known but is estimated to land anywhere between $1-5 million.
American high jumper and long jumper JuVaughn Harrison has already rocked the national and international stages with his record jumping skills, so he's ready to take on the heat of the Olympic stage. Harrison is a newcomer to the competition stage as he only started competing in 2019. Since then, he's won six national titles for both his high jump and low jump.
Don't think he's some inexperienced greenie! He became the first man ever to jump at least 8.40 meters in the long jump and 2.30 meters in the high jump at the 2021 NCAA Division 1 Indoor Track and Field Championships in Arkansas. People are now referring to him as the next Jesse Owens! From winning four Athletics Championships in 2019 and 2021 to the NCAA Indoor Athletics Championship in 2021, Harrison is the newbie for others to watch this year.
Brighton Zeuner can barely be called a newbie to high-stakes competition, but this will be her first adventure on the international stage. This Arizona-born teenager probably has a wall in her home displaying her achievements. From two X Games gold medals to becoming the youngest X Games champion ever at just 13 years old, Zeuner already knows she has the guts to blow everyone else out of the water.
At the 2018 X Games, she was basically competing against herself as she blew past the competition's high score with ease. Skateboarding is among the newest sports to be added to the Olympic games, so everyone competing has as much experience as Zeuner skating in front of the world. We foresee a gold medal in this sparky seventeen-year-old future!
Sydney McLaughlin is a 21-year-old professional hurdler and sprinter from New Brunswick, New Jersey, and is Athing Mu's strongest competition. McLaughlin began running at a young age because of her older sisters Taylor and Morgan. The hobby obviously stuck because she's now the only woman who has broken 52 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles. And guess what? That happened at the Olympic trials back in June. Our hearts go out to her competitors!
McLaughlin was the youngest athlete to qualify for the Summer Olympics back in 2016 after she placed third in the 400-meter hurdles. She placed 16th overall at those games but is coming back full force for Tokyo. Anyone who holds the Gatorade National Girlsls Athlete of the Year trophy for multiple years in a row deserves multiple changes on the world stage, right? We think so! And she has nothing to lose except pride given her net worth of $2 million!
Teenager Caroline Marks is about to face her toughest competition yet: the Tokyo Olympics. But it doesn't look like she has too much to worry about, except for the countless other athletes racing to defeat her. Marks is a professional surfer born in Florida who became the youngest female to compete in a World Surf League event as well as the youngest surfer to qualify for the women's Championship Tour.
She landed the title of Rookie of the Year in 2018, which helped her land one of the two highly sought-after spots for the USA's first surfing team. Guess what? She's also the youngest surfer to qualify for the Olympics. Surprise, surprise. Unfortunately for Marks, she has some tough competition next to top female surfer Carissa Moore.
19-year-old middle-distance runner Athing Mu set multiple world under-20 records for her indoor performances, including the 800-meter relay in 2021 and 600-meter relay in 2019 when she was only 16 years old. At this time, she is the second-fastest runner indoors overall as well as the second-fastest American to run in any setting.
From Sydney McLoughlin to countless international runners, Mu competed against the best of the best at the Olympic Trials, placing first in the 800 meters and qualifying for the games. Her time of 1:56.07 min became the second-fastest result in American, world, and the event's history. As the second youngest of seven siblings, Mu's certainly made a name for herself!
If you don't already know about track-and-field star Sha'Carri Richardson then you must be living under a rock. Everybody was talking about her after she blew past the competition at the United States Olympic Trials with a time of 10.86 for the 100-meter dash. Not to mention she ran a new personal best of 10.72 in April, making her the sixth fastest woman of all time and the fourth-fastest American woman ever.
Unfortunately, the 21-year old tested positive for THC in July, which invalidated her results at the Olympic Trials and made her unable to compete for the 100-meter dash in Tokyo. The controversial decision was widely debated and caused extreme backlash from the general public, but Richardson willingly accepted a one-month period of ineligibility after completing a counseling program. Despite this news, she continues to add zeros to her net worth, which could be up to $5 million.
Clarence Cummings, Jr., AKA CJ Cummings recently celebrated his 21st birthday in time for the Tokyo Olympics. He's an American weightlifter whose strength has landed him the title of Pan American Champion. He also competed at the 2018 World Weightlifting Championships in the 73 kg (161 lbs) category and set 4 Junior World Records.
The young millionaire athlete is no stranger to scoring gold medals at the IWF Junior World Weightlifting Championships, so the Olympics are right up his alley. Other than Cummings, the other weightlifters to look out for are Shi Zhiyong from China who holds the world record in the men's 73kg class as well as fellow Olympic champion Lyu Xiaojun.
So many teenagers are strong-arming their way onto the Olympic stage, including 19-year-old Nevin Harrison. This Seattle native began canoeing at age 12 with her local canoe and kayak club. She shortly transitioned to the national stage at age 15 when she won two gold medals and a silver medal at the 2017 ICF Olympic Hopes Regatta in the Czech Republic. And that was only the beginning!
Harrison now has five gold medals and a silver to her name, which is impressive for someone who became the first American to win a world championship in a sprint canoe at the 2019 Canoe Spring World Championships. That sure is a mouthful! If it's not obvious enough, she's more than prepared to bring her skills to Tokyo's Olympic waters.
Hannah Roberts is a 19-year-old BMX Freestyle cyclist who was born in South Bend, Indiana. Her BMX journey began at age 9 when she was mentored by her hot-shot BMX cousin Brett Banasiewicz to begin riding. Her first competition occurred in 2012 and she hasn't stopped competing since. Her career as a professional BMX cyclist shot upward when she became world champion at the 2017 FISE World Series in China.
She won a second BMX world title two years later and landed a spot in the 2020 Summer Olympics, making her the first American to qualify for the BMX freestyle category! To be fair, BMX Freestyle is also making its Olympic debut, but we're still proud of her. The top athletes Roberts is watching include world champion Perris Benegas of Team USA and Lara Lessmann of Germany.
