Au revoir, New York – these local athletes are taking their talents to Paris.
From a Queens breakdancing champ to a Montclair rock climber with a heart of gold, New York and New Jersey have a talented home team heading to the Olympics. They’re excited to show their stuff on an international stage.
“I’m so grateful to show the world what we’re so passionate about as breakers,” said 34-year-old dancer Sunny Choi.
“Breaking was born in the streets of New York, in the Bronx … It’s such an honor to carry that legacy forward.”
With the 2024 games less than 100 days away, here’s a closer look at Choi and four other hometown heroes.
Sunny Choi, 35, breaking
The Bayside, Queens resident ditched her demanding job as director of global creative operations for Estee Lauder last year to focus fully on breakdancing — known simply as “breaking” in the Olympics, where it’s an event for the first time ever this year.
It paid off.
This past November, she won gold at Chile’s Pan American Games, securing her place in Paris.
“My entire journey as a breaker has been about discovering myself, uncovering layer by layer by layer to really get to the core of who I am,” she said.
Choi, who was raised in Kentucky by first-generation Korean Americans, wanted to become an Olympic gymnast as a child, but ultimately opted for a business degree instead of the balance beam.
She didn’t start breaking until she was in college at the University of Pennsylvania and joined the “Freaks of the Beat” club.
She credits her three brothers — who sometimes wouldn’t let her wrestle and play with them because she was a girl — for her grit and perseverance.
“When you’re told when you’re young that you can’t do something, you go do it,” she said. “So when I got into breaking, which is a heavily male-dominated sport, I was like, ‘I’m going to do something nobody else does.’ So here I am.”
Jimmer Fredette, 35, 3×3 basketball
Three-on-three basketball made its Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021, but the US men didn’t qualify.
Not so this year. Fredette, a sharpshooting guard from upstate New York, leads a promising squad that secured a spot in Paris last November.
His road to the Olympics has been a winding one. Fredette was a college star at Brigham Young University, but his seven years in the NBA were spotty. In 2016, he joined the Chinese Basketball Association’s Shanghai Sharks and returned to his collegiate prowess, winning the International MVP award a year later.
Then, in 2022, he started focusing on the 3×3 game, which is played on a half court with one hoop. He found near immediate success.
“He’s the best 3×3 player to ever play the game, in my opinion,” USA 3×3 men’s national team coach Joe Lewandowski said in December. “He is that good.”
Amy Wang, 21, table tennis
When she was just 4-years-old, her father, Xiaota Wang, set up three tennis tables in the basement – one for her and one for each of her two older brothers.
By age 7, she competed in her first table tennis tournament in Westfield, New Jersey and made it to the finals, where she lost to her brother, Eddie.
The loss only made her practice more.
“After school I would take a nap, wake up and practice with my dad for one to two hours, and do homework after,” Wang told The Post.
At age 12, she made the U.S. National Team, and she and her dad started taking the sport even more seriously. But, at age 17, she missed qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics by just one game.
“I had one match left, and I lost. It really killed me,” Wang told The Post. “I thought I was going to quit table tennis after that.”
She took a year off to focus on her mental health and her studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where’s she majoring in pre-med and minoring in accounting.
Then, she returned to the sport stronger than ever, winning the U.S. Open Women’s Singles Championships in 2022 and 2023.
In March, she earned her spot in Paris.
“I’m really happy,” said Wang, who wants to be a pediatrician. “Making the Olympic team is a dream come true.”
Molly Reckford, 31, rowing
The Short Hills, New Jersey, native has Olympic greatness in her blood.
Her grandfather, Bill Spencer, competed in the 1964 and 1968 Winter Olympics in the biathlon and later served as a coach at five olympiads.
“He’s been a huge inspiration for me,” she said.
The Dartmouth alum practices up to five hours per day while consuming as many as 4,000 calories to fuel her body during rigorous training sessions in Princeton.
At the Tokyo Olympics, she and her partner finished fifth in women’s lightweight double sculls. This year, she’s intent on making the podium.
“I think a lot about how my grandfather was a two-time Olympian, so going back really felt like something I wanted to do to honor him,” she said. “Going to Paris and having the race of our lives and feeling like I left it all out there and found my maximum speed is my goal.”
Jesse Grupper, 27, sport climbing
He’s tackled some of the world’s hardest sport climbs — short, highly intensive routes with pre-placed bolts — including La Rambla in Catalonia.
But, Grupper insists he isn’t a thrill seeker.
“I’m honestly afraid of roller coasters,” he told The Post. “A lot of people have this perception of climbing – that you’re getting a rush from that fear, but it’s one of the safest sports if you do it correctly.”
He started the sport as a very energetic 6-year-old at the New Jersey Rock Gym in Fairfield, near the family’s home in Montclair.
Regular trips to the Shawangunks Mountains, near New Paltz, New York, followed.
“That was a go-to spot for me throughout my childhood, and I still enjoy getting to climb there today,” he told The Post.
At age 11, he won gold at the USA Climbing Youth Bouldering Nationals and went on to compete on the international rock climbing circuit.
But, he has plenty of interests beyond belays and boulder. He meditates daily, makes his own granola, is learning to play the banjo and loves yoga and listening to Mumford & Sons and the Abbot Brothers.
At Tufts University, he majored in mechanical engineering and ran the school’s biomechanics club, finding purpose in creating devices that help people with disabilities.
“One of the best things we can do as people is pushing our limits to reach our full potential,” he said. “But I’ve always wanted to do that for others as well.”
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