BY DAN GLICKMAN
Two of the five Olympians with Rochester connections competed Saturday in Paris on the first full day of competition in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
Pittsford’s Magnus Sheffield, a cyclist, opened his Olympics with the first of two events: the Time Trial. Racing against the clock on a rainy and slippery Paris afternoon, the 22-year-old finished 16th out of 34 competitors with a time of 38:05.24, 1:53.04 behind the gold medalist, Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel.
Sheffield started strong and, at one point, had the fastest time at the 13.1-kilometer mark of the course. A crash and strong performances by later-starting favorites knocked him out of contention but he still finished in the top half of the field in his first Olympic event. His next event, the road race, is Saturday, August 8. The event starts at 5:00 A.M. and airs online (with a valid TV subscription), on Peacock, on CNBC, and will be featured during NBC’s early morning coverage.
Later in the day, Penfield native Kevin Penev represented Bulgaria—his parents’ homeland—in the Men’s Gymnastics qualification. The 24-year-old failed to qualify for the all-around finals or finals on any individual apparatus. His best finish came in the Floor Exercise, where he finished 12th out of 64 competitors with a score of 14.166, 0.267 points away from an eighth-place finish that would have qualified him for the finals.
Expanding outside of the Rochester area into other parts of Upstate New York, Buffalo’s Kim Pegula and teammate Coco Gauff began their Women’s Doubles tournament on Saturday with a two-set victory over Australia’s Ellen Perez and Daria Saville. The daughter of Fairport native and Buffalo Bills and Sabres co-owner Kim Pegula, she’ll begin her Women’s Singles tournament against Switzerland’s Viktorija Golubic on Sunday.
Five Rochester-related athletes are competing at the 2024 Olympics, with others taking part behind the scenes and several more from surrounding regions also active. Our preview article provides information on the athletes and how to watch them compete.
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