80 TIME July 19/July 26, 2021
TOKYO
OLYMPICS
Gabriel MedinaSURFING, BRAZIL
There may be no one better suited to making the
sporting masses fall in love with surfi ng in its
Olympic debut than this 27-year-old Brazilian. The
world’s top-ranked surfer, Gabriel Medina is
known for an exhilarating acrobatic style,
frequently soaring above the waves for
highly technical maneuvers. In 2016, he
became the fi rst surfer to complete a back-
fl ip with his board over the water in
competition. Medina grew up on
Brazil’s southern Atlantic coast,
where the swell is consistently
large. That’s a far cry from what
he’ll encounter at Japan’s
Tsurigasaki Beach. “[The
waves] are small and funky,”
he told the Guardian in May.
“But if you want to be the
best, you gotta do every-
thing in any conditions.”
—Ciara NugentApril Ross
BEACH VOLLEYBALL, U.S.
All that’s left for April Ross
is gold. Ross won a silver
medal at the London Olym-
pics, playing with Jennifer
Kessy, and in Rio she won
bronze with Kerri Walsh
Jennings, the three-time
gold medalist. This cycle,
Ross and Walsh Jennings
split up; Ross, now 39,
teamed with Alix Klineman,
a convert from indoor
volley ball. (Walsh Jennings
failed to qualify for her sixth
Olympics.) The pair spent
the pandemic training
together and won their fi rst
tournament of 2021, in
Doha, Qatar. Ross, who also
played indoor volley ball in
college—at USC, where she
won two national titles—
and professionally before
swapping sneakers for
sand, says she’s inspired to
keep going by her mother
Margie, who died of breast
cancer when Ross was 19;
she visualizes herself, daily,
at the top of the podium
in Tokyo, her mom looking
down on her smiling. “It
makes me emotional,” says
Ross. “So hopefully that’s
the driving force.”
—Sean Gregory
Yukiko
UenoSOFTBALL, JAPAN
After softball was dropped from
the 2012 and 2016 Games,
Japan insisted it return for Tokyo.
Little wonder why, with a pitcher like
Yukiko Ueno waiting in the wings.
The veteran right-hander throws
one of the fastest pitches in the
world—up to 80 m.p.h.—and has
a history of big wins in the Olympics.
At Athens in 2004, Ueno pitched a
perfect game over seven innings—
the only one in Olympic history. At
the 2008 Beijing Games, she threw
413 pitches in two days while lead-
ing Japan to gold. Her performance
was such a sensation that Ueno’s
413 pitches was named one of
Japan’s top buzzwords of the year.
At 38, she has one more chance to
exhibit her extraordinary dominance
on the world stage again—this time
on home ground. —Aria ChenKatinka
HosszuSWIMMING, HUNGARY
A veteran racer at 32, Katinka Hosszu
holds the world records in the 200-m
and 400-m individual medley events,
which require swimmers to master
all four strokes—butterfl y, backstroke,
breaststroke and freestyle—and
dominated her competition in
those events at the 2019 world
championships. Tokyo will be her
fi fth Olympics—and her fi rst since
splitting with two different coaches,
one of whom is her ex-husband.
This time, Hosszu decided to train
herself. “As a woman, it is sometimes
a bit different than [it is] for male
athletes,” she told Sports Illustrated.
“Sometimes the coaches get more
credit than the athletes.” That’s not a
surprise coming from the outspoken
Hungarian, who earned the nickname
Iron Lady for her notorious stamina
racing in a seemingly inhuman
number of events. —Alice ParkShelly-Ann Fraser-PryceTRACK AND FIELD, JAMAICA
Until further notice, 34-year-old Shelly-Ann Fraser-
Pryce is the fastest woman alive. On June 5, the
two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 100 m ran
the second quickest time in history, 10.63 sec. Only
Florence Griffi th Joyner, who set the world record with
a 10.49 in 1988, has run faster. In 2017, after Fraser-
Pryce won bronze in the 100 m in Rio, she gave birth
to her son Zyon (which earned her a fi tting nickname:
Mommy Rocket). She returned to the track to win gold
at the world championships in 2019 and is now the
woman to beat in the marquee sprint event in Tokyo.
A win would make her the fi rst woman to win three
100-m golds and the oldest woman to pull off the feat.
Heading into her fourth Olympics, Fraser-Pryce is
the biggest star of a Jamaican team that always has
high expectations on the track. In a sport that tends
not to reward longevity, Mommy Rocket remains a solid
bet to deliver. —S.G.