Alexandria's Noah Lyles Among Athletes Headed To Paris Summer Olympics

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Two athletes with an Alexandria connection are headed to Paris to represent Team USA in the 2024 Summer Olympics.

More than 10,500 athletes from around the world will compete in the Paris Summer Olympic Games, officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, between the opening ceremony on July 26 and the closing ceremony on Aug 11.

Included among the 32 sports are gymnastics, swimming, diving, track and field, archery, basketball, beach volleyball, boxing, golf, tennis and wrestling.

One new sport — breaking, described by the Olympics as a “young, acrobatic and urban sport” with American roots — will be added this year.

Back for a second time are three sports that debuted in the Tokyo Summer 2020 Olympics — sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing.

The athletes who have qualified from Alexandria are:

Noah Lyles, track and field, 100-meter, 200-meter and 4x100-meter relay

Lyles competed in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and won the bronze medal in the men's 200m sprint. Lyles, who graduated from T.C. Williams High School (now Alexandria City High School), is eyeing Usain Bolt's world record of 19.19 seconds in the 200m sprint and previously broke the American record with 19.31 seconds at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. The 19.31-second time was also the third-fastest overall in history. As of 2023, Lyles was ranked first worldwide in the 100m and 200m.

Christian Tabash, rowing

Tabash, who is from Alexandria, first got into rowing after not making his high school basketball team and watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A Harvard University graduate now attending University of California as a graduate student, he has been named to the Junior National Team in 2016-2017 and Under 23 National Team in 2021. Some of his athletic feats have been placing second at the 2017 World Rowing Junior Championships in the men’s eight, third at the 2021 World Rowing U23 Championships in the four+, and fourth at the 2016 World Rowing Junior Championships in the two.

The full schedule of events and competitions is found on the Olympics website.

NBC and its affiliated channels again have exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights. The network has said it will provide at least nine hours of daytime coverage during the Paris Games, including live broadcasts of favorite event finals. The NBC streaming service Peacock will provide coverage of every sport and event. The full broadcast and streaming schedules haven’t been announced yet.