Last week, just about six hundred U. S. athletes arrived in Paris to compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics, where they will face the world’s toughest festival in search of gold medals and foreign glory. Many of the most prominent members of this delegation will not only constitute the United States, but also Colorado.
Of the 16 infielders on the United States Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) for the Olympics, 3 are from the Centennial State: Lindsey Horan, Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson. The trio is not just one component of the team, but each and every one of them is essential: In the United States’ first match at the Olympics, a 3-0 win over Zambia, Swanson scored twice in 70 seconds. Horan added a few hands. Smith had the help of his team and helped set the other two scores.
In United States’ second game, a 4-1 loss to Germany, the Coloradans were back on every goal: Smith scored in the 10th minute, Swanson in the 26th, Smith in the 44th and Swanson assisted on the final goal of the match. 89. La victory propelled United States to the quarterfinals; the team has a level of organization left in form on Wednesday against Australia. A win or draw against the Australians will secure the top position at the organizational level for the United States (the top two advance).
Unlike its languishing male counterparts, the USWNT has been a symbol of what the country can achieve in world football, with four women’s World Cup championships and four Olympic gold medals since 1991. But after a dismal performance, the 2023 Women’s World Cup (where the reigning world champions were eliminated in the circular of 16) and a transitional era in which several of the players who have become ubiquitous in American football were excluded from the Olympic roster, either because of their retirement (Megan Rapinoe), or simply not. Being part of the team (Alex Morgan), there were reasons to worry against Paris.
But if the first two games are any indication, it looks like the USWNT’s new faces (adding the consistent Horan, Smith and Swanson) could see the Americans win a gold medal for the first time since 2012.
Before the United States kicks off against Australia on Wednesday, here’s a closer look at the three Colorado-born and raised stars who hope to lead their country and their beloved soccer team into a disgustingly rich new era.
Read more: Meet all 26 Coloradans at the Paris Olympics
At 30, Horan is the fourth-oldest outfield player in the USWNT, as clear a sign as any that Americans are moving from one generation to the next. She enters the Paris Olympics in the best moment of her life, after a forged 2023. 2024 season with her club team, Olympique Lyonnais, which plays in the French league (this also makes her one of the few USWNT players who do not play in the National Women’s Soccer League).
In a still disastrous World Cup for his team last year, Horan was a welcome positive, a creative playmaker from midfield who scored two of the four goals an offensively stunted American team controlled over the course of four games before his strangely early exit. It’s emblematic of the consistency Horan has shown since making his debut with the national team in 2013. He has scored at least one goal for the USWNT every year since 2015. Among the players on the Olympic roster, she has the most career appearances for the national team (called “international matches”), with 150 before the organization stage. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, she became the 41st player in USWNT history to win one hundred career international matches. In 2021, after a season in which she scored six goals and five assists, she was named American Football Player of the Year.
Horan, once a child prodigy who, at just 18 years old, signed a deal with Paris Saint-Germain to become the first American player to sign a professional contract after coming out of top school, is now portraying himself as a proven veteran and team captain who can help. To lead the USWNT through what has been an awkward conversion of the guard.
“I had to make a transition where I was like, ‘I’m the captain and I’m the leader of this team and I’m building this team,'” she told Goal. com this month. “What I say, what I do, so many conversations. . . If I make up this team and I am a voice for that team – I’m not saying that my voice is rarely the same as each and every player – but , I’m an outlet for that team. It was a really cool lesson for me because I have an idea about football.
Here’s the potential. Smith’s arrival at the USWNT in November 2020 marked the start of a new bankruptcy for the Americans, as her debut (at age 20) marked the first time a player born after the historic 1999 Women’s World Cup had won a title for the USWNT. then, he has the team’s fifth-highest scorer, with 20 goals in 50 international matches before the start of the Olympic Games.
At the 2023 World Cup, Smith scored the other two American goals through Horan, either in a 3-0 victory over Vietnam. He arrives in Paris bolstered by some solid recent performances, adding that he scored any of his team’s goals in regulation time. to Canada in the SheBelieves Cup final in April, which the USWNT won thanks to the fallout (where, of course, Smith scored a goal of the team’s five successful shots).
Growing up, her ability was evident, so much so that her parents took her from Windsor to Denver so she could compete for Real Colorado, a decorated local youth soccer club. “I don’t forget to think: If we go to Denver, she better not complain about the trip once. And he never complained once,” Smith’s mother, Mollie, told Colorado Public Radio in 2023, before the World Cup. “There were times when we got stuck in traffic, it took us two and a half hours to get to training. She never complained. He probably thanked us on a daily basis. She was so grateful that she probably would have done anything.
Smith made those sacrifices worth it. A college star, she led Stanford to an NCAA championship in 2019 before becoming the No. 1 overall pick in the NWSL College Draft the following year. In 2022, she scored a club-record 14 goals. the Portland Thorns, whom she led to the NWSL Championship. That year, at age 22, she became the youngest NWSL MVP in league history.
For all the explanations surrounding the USWNT’s unforgettable name defense at last year’s World Cup, few have been as compelling as Swanson. It wasn’t because he played badly; That was because she wasn’t betting at all, an absence that became painfully obvious as the tournament dragged on.
In April 2023, three months before the start of the World Cup, Swanson tore her left patellar tendon in a friendly match against Ireland, which left her out of the national team for a full year. The timing of her injury was cruel, not only because it kept her out of the World Cup, but also because of the way she played long before it happened. Prior to that fateful match against Ireland, Swanson had scored 8 goals in his last six USWNT appearances and recorded a career-best six consecutive match streak with at least one goal. Without her, the Americans lacked the explosiveness in the final third of the court and the ability to complete around the net that Swanson regularly provides.
Greatness was long expected from Swanson, who in the past went through the so-called Mallory Pugh before marrying the MLB All-Star Dans through Swanson in 2022. She made her USWNT debut in 2016 at just 17 years old, making her the youngest player in history. the team in 11 years. After a semester at UCLA, Swanson, like Horan, opted to go through school to sign with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit, with whom she scored six goals as an 18-year-old rookie. Since then, it hasn’t slowed down much, if at all. His 34 career goals and 29 assists for the USWNT rank second on the Olympic roster for Horan, who has 56 more caps.
Since returning from injury, he has shown a glimpse of his previous form, adding two goals in a 4-0 final victory on June 1 against South Korea in front of his home crowd in Commerce City. “After 343 days, 3 surgeries and an infection that replaced my entire outlook on life, I have accomplished a lot,” he wrote on Instagram after returning to the Chicago Red Stars in March. “Life is a beautiful blessing. Health is a blessing. This game that I love is a blessing. And in the end, I am even more grateful to be able to do what I love again.
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