LSU Olympians Return From Tokyo With Impressive Medal Haul

LSU current and former athletes finished with 6 gold medals, 2 silver, and 3 bronze at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Country medal rankings can be subjective, but by conventional counts LSU would have ranked 17th as a country, between South Korea and Poland.

Track & Field led the Tigers as you might expect, their 6 medalists passing LSU T&F’s previous high mark of 5 in 2004. Vernon Norwood became the first Tiger since Richard Thompson to medal in multiple events (4x400m relay/gold, 4x400m mixed relay/bronze). Mondo Duplantis finally got the gold medal we all knew he was destined for in the pole vault and came close to breaking his own world record. While he didn’t medal, JuVaughn Harrison still impressed in his efforts as the first man to compete in the High Jump and Long Jump in the same Olympics since Jim Thorpe, and he has a long olympic career ahead of him.

Sylvia Fowles earned her 4th gold with the US women’s basketball team, continuing to cement her legacy as one of the all time greats in the sport, while Duop Reath help Australia to Men’s hoops bronze. Allysha Chapman and Canada pulled one of the big upsets of the Olympics by taking the Women’s Soccer gold. Michael Venus brought New Zealand a bronze in Men’s Doubles, their first medal in tennis in over 100 years.

It was also a successful Games for LSU coaching, particularly the swim team. Softball Assistant Howard Dobson helped the USA to silver in the sport’s return to the Olympics. Retiring Swim coach Dave Geyer gets credit for the first gold medalist in LSU Swimming history with Brooks Curry’s work on the 4x100 freestyle relay team while incoming coach Rick Bishop helped Hong Kong to 2 silver medals in the Women’s 100m and 200m Freestyle.

Below you’ll find the full results for all LSU athletes and coaches who participated.