Silver in Turin: Valerie Fleming MA ’03, right, with teammate Shauna Rohbock celebrating their silver medal finish in the 2006 Olympics—just three years after Fleming first started competing in the sport. / Photo by Joe Rimkus Jr./Miami Herald/KRT/Cameleon/ABACAPRESS.COM
Olympians over the Decades: the Gaels Who Have Competed in the World’s Foremost Sports Competition
As we root on Gaels at the Paris Olympics this year, here’s a look back at nearly a century of Gael Olympians: from boxing to bobsled, volleyball to synchronized swimming, gymnastics to relay—and the first human to ski over 150 mph.
The 2024 Paris Olympics are officially underway, and maybe you’ve heard: Gaels are in the global spotlight.
Three former Saint Mary’s basketball players —Patty Mills, Matthew Dellavedova, and Jock Landale—make up a fourth of the Australian Boomers’ twelve man roster. Plus, two former SMC assistant coaches, Adam Caporn and David Patrick, will return for their second consecutive Olympics with the Boomers.
In Tokyo in 2021, the Boomers brought home the bronze. In Paris 2024, the US team may be favored to win in men’s basketball, but Australia has a real shot at this year’s gold medal. “It’s a pretty cool achievement to play with these guys knowing we share something at St. Mary’s,” Landale told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday. “[Coach Randy Bennett] put together something pretty special over there (in Moraga), and now we’re doing special things as the Boomers, and he plays a direct part in it.”
If you know your history, then you know these five Gaels are certainly not the first to bring Moraga magic to the Olympics. As the 2024 Games kick off, we thought we’d take a look back at eight extraordinary Gael Olympians. Some made history; others, well, they’re still making it.
Rob Browning
SMC Volleyball Coach, US Team Manager | Gold
Those who follow SMC volleyball know Browning, the longest-tenured and winningest coach in the College’s history. He celebrates two decades at Saint Mary’s this year.
What some Gaels may not know: He’s been at four Olympic Games. Browning was an assistant coach at Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004 and team manager in Beijing in 2008—where the team struck gold, their first in 30 years—and in London in 2012. (Read his reflections on the 2008 win here.)
Heather Pease Olson
Artistic Swimming: Team | Gold
After her junior year at Saint Mary’s, Pease spent her summer break competing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Team synchronized swimming (now known as artistic swimming) made its Olympic debut that year, and she and her US teammates were amongst the first competitors. They gave a dizzying performance, their underwater somersaults set to a jazzy rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
In the end, the US team earned a near perfect score and claimed the gold. Pease, an English major at Saint Mary’s, soon transferred to Stanford University to take part in their renowned artistic swimming program.
In 2000, she joined the US Olympic team again in Sydney, this time ranking fifth. She went on to coach Stanford’s program for years.
Tracee Talavera ’90
Gymnastics | Silver
By age 14, Talavera had already won the all-around title at the American Cup, qualified for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, and was the subject of a biography. A Mexican American gymnast who grew up in San Francisco, she largely charted her own course. “There’s just some drive in me that has to work hard at gymnastics,” she said.
She wouldn’t get to showcase that drive in Moscow, however; the US boycotted those Games, protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. But given the chance to compete in 1984, Talavera and her team garnered the silver medal at the Los Angeles Olympics, thanks in part to her trademark “Talavera flair.”
She soon retired from gymnastics and enrolled at Saint Mary’s in 1986, earning a BA in Communication. In 1998, Talavera was inducted in the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
Valerie Fleming MA ’03
Bobsled | Silver
“It all happened so fast,” Fleming said of her journey to bobsledding—words that, fittingly, describe the sport itself. A sprinter, soccer player, and all-around athlete, she devoted most of her twenties to throwing javelin. At age 27, though—not long after earning her MA in Health, Physical Education, and Recreation from Saint Mary’s—she discovered bobsledding. The rest, she said, was a “whirlwind.”
Three years later, in 2006, Fleming and her teammate Shauna Rohbock were making their Olympic runs, competing at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy. With a final completion time of 3:50.69, they made the podium, earning silver. It was a high point in their illustrious career: together, they won more World Cup medals than any US pair, male or female.
These days, Fleming is program manager for bobsled and skeleton at the Utah Olympic Park, training up the next generation of Olympians.
Miyako Tanaka-Oulevey MA ’95
Artistic Swimming: Duet | Bronze
Years before she was a certified sport psychologist, university professor, in-demand public speaker, and member of the International Olympic Committee, Tanaka-Oulevey was one of Japan’s foremost artistic swimmers. By 1988, the 21-year-old had won four bronze medals at international competitions. And that year, she and her duet partner, Mikako Kotani, were selected to represent Japan at the Seoul Olympics.
The lead-up to the Games was difficult, she recently told World Aquatics. “We practiced almost 12 hours a day, every day.” But the payoff was sweet: After giving a thrillingly technical performance, Tanaka-Oulevey and Kotani took home the bronze medal.
In 1995, she earned her MA in Health, Physical Education, & Recreation at SMC, a degree that helped her transition to a thriving career outside of the pool.
Jeffrey Hamilton ’88
Speed Skiing | Bronze
If anyone had a genuine need for speed, it was this Gael. From an early age, a former ski coach recalled, Hamilton preferred “straight lines” to traditional zig-zagging: “The ski patrol was always chasing him,” the coach said. Only after graduating from SMC with a Bachelor’s in English, though, did he wholeheartedly devote himself to speed skiing.
He had only competed in six races by the time he qualified for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France—the year speed skiing was introduced as a demonstration sport. As newscasters reported, community members from his hometown of Auburn, California, chipped in to buy his ticket to the games. He blazed his way to bronze that year, and went on to win four world championships. But Hamilton's biggest accomplishment, arguably, came in 1995, when he reached 150.2 miles per hour—shattering the fastest speed recorded in a non-motorized sport and becoming the first human in history to ski faster than 150 miles per hour. (That also earned him a coveted spot on the cover of Guinness World Records.) He held the record until 2002.
In 2023, after decades of coaching young skiers in Auburn, Hamilton lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. In his honor, his family created the Jeff Hamilton Legacy Fund, which financially supports athletes, artists, and professionals with “limitless potential.”
Joseph Lang ’33
Boxing
Lang was still a student when he became, as the Los Angeles Daily News put it, “Saint Mary’s college contribution to Uncle Sam’s Olympic boxing team.” As the runner-up for the bantamweight division at the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union Championships, he qualified to compete at that year’s Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
The 117-pound boxer slugged his way to the semifinals, but ultimately the bronze by decision to Jose Villanueva, the Philippines’ first boxer to earn a medal. After the Games, Lang went pro for a few years, competing in and winning tournaments in California and Nevada.
Michael Ohioze MA ’20
Track and Field: Sprints
When he was a first-year at St. Ambrose University in Iowa, Ohioze recorded the fifth fastest 400-meter dash in NAIA history. It was a clarifying moment, the British-born, ten-time All-American athlete told SMC NewsCenter in 2021. “Since then, track has taken first place over soccer.”
In 2021—a year after completing his MA in Kinesiology at Saint Mary’s—he clinched one of five spots on Great Britain’s 4x400 Olympic relay team. While the team came in sixth at the Tokyo Games, Ohioze’s sprinting career is still picking up: In June, he made the podium at the 2024 British Athletics Championships, finishing third in the 200-meter dash.
Hayden Royster is Staff Writer and Steven Boyd Saum is Executive Director of Strategic Communications & Content at Saint Mary's. Write them.
