Update on South Florida athletes at the Paris Olympics

The Paris Olympics are approaching the halfway mark, with swimming winding down, track and field cranking up and gymnastics offering Simone Biles more chances for gold medals in the individual event finals.

The U.S. leads the overall medal tally and China has won the most golds. France, in second place on both tables, has bedazzled spectators and athletes with its venues at iconic sites. French judo superstar Teddy Riner won gold in his heavyweight match Friday and swimmer Leon Marchand, coached by Michael Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman, won his fourth gold, in the 200-meter individual medley.

How are South Florida athletes faring?

▪ Track and Field: Miami Northwestern High graduate Twanisha “Tee Tee” Terry qualified first Friday in the slowest 100-meter heat in a time of 11.15. Terry, six-time state champion in the sprints, trains with 100-meter favorite Sha’Carri Richardson and 200-meter favorite Noah Lyles in Clermont, Florida, near Orlando under Coach Dennis Mitchell. Richardson qualified with the fourth fastest time of 10.94. Josee-Marie Ta Lou-Smith of Ivory Coast was fastest in 10.87. Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Great Britain’s Daryll Neita recorded times of 10.92. Semifinals and final are Saturday.

▪ Sailing: Windsurfer Dominique Stater of Miami did not qualify for the medal round of the regatta in Marseille. Light and shifty winds resulted in the cancellation of six races in the iQFOiL class. Stater’s best finish in 14 races was sixth. Stater, a University of Miami graduate who won silver at the 2023 Pan Am Games, trains at the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club and U.S. Sailing Center in Coconut Grove. Her uncle Chris Stater competed for Puerto Rico at the 1976 Olympics in the Tornado class.

South Florida is represented by three more sailors. Erika Reineke of Fort Lauderdale has recorded finishes of 13th, 25th and 18th in the first three races in women’s dinghy (ILCA 6, formerly Laser Radial) class. She’s in 20th place in the 43-boat field with seven races left to move up to the top 10 and qualify for the medal race.

In mixed dinghy (470), skipper Stu McNay, a five-time Olympian who trains in Miami, and Lara Dallman-Weiss finished 9th and 17th in 6-8-knot winds. Eight races to go to qualify for the medal race.

Skipper Sara Newberry Moore and crew David Liebenberg begin competition in the mixed multihull (NACRA 17) class on Saturday if the breeze picks up. Newberry Moore, a Cushman School grad, lives on the Miami River.

▪ Equestrian: Kent Farrington and Laura Kraut of Wellington won the silver medal in the team jumping event Friday on the grounds of Versailles with U.S. teammates Ward McLain and Karl Cook. They committed just four penalties. Great Britain placed first and France third.

Five riders from West Palm Beach are competing at Versailles, two in jumping, and Adrienne Lyle, Marcus Orlob and Endel Ots in dressage.

▪ Men’s soccer: The U.S. team, which includes Key Biscayne’s Benjamin Cremaschi, was eliminated Friday in the quarterfinals by Morocco, 4-0. Cremaschi, 19, an Inter Miami midfielder, was the youngest player on the team, which was back in the Olympics for the first time since 2008.

▪ Judo: Angelica Delgado did not advance in the 52kg class past the round of 16, where she lost to Italy’s Odette Giuffrida, 1-0.

“She is a current world champion and I felt really good and felt like if I could have gotten past her, I definitely would have won a medal,” Delgado said after the match. “I was trying to close the distance and she just kept pulling away, pulling away and not letting me get close or getting the attacks.”

Delgado, a three-time Olympian and the U.S. judo team’s highest-ranked athlete, grew up in the Tamiami neighborhood, and was coached starting at age nine in her backyard by her father Miguel, a national judo team athlete in Cuba who left the island in the 1980s, bringing his judo gi as one of his few possessions. Delgado is a Ferguson High and FIU graduate who married U.S. teammate Alex Turner in 2022.

Delgado, 33, said she was motivated to train for Paris after finishing ninth at the Tokyo Games because of the popularity of judo in France.

“We are treated like royalty,” Delgado said. “When you compete here it’s like competing in a packed American football stadium.”

Delgado trains at the U.S. national training center in Broward under Coach Jhonny Prado with Maria LaBorde, who defected from Cuba nine years ago, got U.S. citizenship in 2022 and made the U.S. team at age 33. She was eliminated in the 48kg class, also in the round of 16 by an Italian.

▪ Water Polo: Ashleigh Johnson has been consistent in goal for the U.S. team, which is 3-1 in group play as it seeks its fourth straight gold medal. Johnson had nine saves Friday in a 17-5 victory over France. Johnson, who grew up in the Redland and graduated from Ransom-Everglades and Princeton University, won golds in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021.

▪ Diving: Kassidy Cook, a native of Plantation who trains at The Woodlands in Texas, captured the silver medal in women’s synchronized 3-meter diving with Sarah Bacon, the first U.S. medal of the Paris Games. The duo, nicknamed Cook’N’Bacon, finished second to China and ahead of Great Britain.

Cook, 29, returned to her second Olympics after finishing 13th in the individual 3-meter at the 2016 Rio Games.

▪ Tennis: Coco Gauff of Delray Beach, who missed the 2021 Tokyo Games because of a positive COVID-19 test the day before her departure, lost 6-7, 2-6 to Croatia’s Donna Vekic in a third-round singles match Tuesday at Roland Garros. The next day, top-seeded Gauff and doubles partner Jessica Pegula were eliminated in the second round by the Czech duo of Karolina Muchova and Linda Noskova, 2-6, 6-4, 10-5. Later that night, Gauff and mixed doubles partner Taylor Fritz exited in a 7-6, 3-6, 10-8 quarterfinal loss to Canada’s Gabby Dabrowski and Felix Auger-Aliassime.