Montana and PARIS 2024!

The 2024 Summer Olympics, set to kick off in Paris on July 26, will include four extra sports. They are breaking, surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing. Baseball and softball were removed from the 2024 Olympics, but will be reinstated for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Olympians are still being made here in Montana. Montana has the privilege of these talented athletes representing out state and our country. Once again, she has a chance to cheer on several of their own at the July 26 – August 11, 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games.

Missoula’s Katharine Berkoff makes USA swim team for Olympics. Hellgate alum Katharine Berkoff now gets to add Olympian to her decorated career, as she will represent the USA swim team in the 100m backstroke in the Paris Olympics. Katharine punched her ticket after finishing second in the 100-meter backstroke. Her time was 57.91 seconds, while she finished behind Regan Smith, who set a new world record of 57.13. Berkoff will be the second Olympian in the family. She will follow in the footsteps of her father, Dave Berkoff, who competed at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics in four events, winning medals in all four events, including two gold medals in the medley relay.

USA Cycling announced its Olympic Team with Bozeman native Cameron Wood earning a spot as the first Montanan to compete in BMX Racing. “Blessed, honored, and proud is understatement after being named to the 2024 US Olympic Team in Paris,” Wood said in a press release. “There has been several challenges and a lot of adversity faced during the qualifying process. It feels rewarding to have faced those challenges head on, grow as an athlete and person, and ultimately earn my way in.” “It has been a dream of mine for a long time to represent my country in the Olympics and give it my all,” he added.

Wood was born in Great Fall and grew up in Bozeman before moving to Phoenix at the age of 16 to pursue BMX racing at a higher level of training and competition. Wood has taken full advantage of that opportunity to become one of the top racers in the country. He competed in the 2020 Tokyo test event at 18 years old before winning his first professional race at 19 in 2022. The now 22-year-old is a two-time World Cup Champion and bounced back from a major shoulder injury in 2023 to make the 2024 Paris Olympic team.

Whitefish native Nicole Heavirland has made the USA Women’s Olympic Rugby Sevens Team as a Traveling Reserve. 29-year-old Heavirland, a Hooker/Scrumhalf, will now travel to Paris for her second Olympics after joining USA Rugby in Tokyo in 2020. The Eagles finished sixth in those Olympics.

Ivan Roe, a Manhattan, Montana native, will be making his Olympic debut in Paris for Men’s 50m Smallbore Air Rifle. Roe is currently a sergeant and a marksmanship instructor in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit at Fort Moore, Georgia. He will represent Montana in two separate shooting events at the Paris Games.

For Roe’s 50m event, shots are taken at a bullseye target at a distance of 10.94 yards using a 4.5mm-caliber air rifle with a maximum weight of 12.13 pounds. Roe won Team USA selection over 77 other male marksmen with a cumulative Olympic Trials score of 1898.9 points, which was 9.1 points over the second-place finisher. He also qualified in the 10m Air Rifle.

Sergeant Roe was quoted as saying, “Representing the U.S. is a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid. So it’s a culmination of everything I’ve been doing the last two decades. It’s a huge, huge milestone.”

The journey once again continues for U.S. Army Spc. and Belgrade native, Ali Weisz. After a 14th place finish in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Weisz dedicated herself to become better and more focused.

Weisz felt her shooting was definitely not up to her standards at the Tokyo Olympics. However, she did feel she gave it her best shot. “The experience and comfort of knowing, was satisfaction enough. I had such a good experience, even on the line, competing where, when I walked off the line like shot my last shot, put my gun down, I knew that I gave it everything I had that day,” Weisz said reflecting upon her first ever Olympics.

Not advancing to the round of eight and ultimately the medal round gave her motivation moving forward in other competitions. This last October at the ISSF world championship and Olympic qualifier, Weisz stepped up to the line and won the gold in women’s 10m air rifle with and a silver medal in the women’s team 10mr air rifle. Both finishes earned her an Olympic quota.

“As far as the individual medal, I knew I was capable of it, just like I knew I was capable of it back in Tokyo,” Weisz said. “I’ve been working really hard all year in my training, kind of working on the things that I was maybe missing just a little bit of in Tokyo.”

The team aspect is essentially the same as any individual event. The difference being that the scores add up to create a team score. For Weisz, “it’s a challenging event with the shift in mentality required to score well.”

“I’m still just shooting a score like I normally would, but now sort of that mentality of our scores are coming together. It matters how I shoot for more than just me; it impacts them as well.”

The Olympic athletes have come a long way in attire and equipment. Today’s Olympic equipment is designed for speed, aerodynamics and top-quality performance. Today’s Olympic shooters wear special clothing, such as a shooting jacket, shooting trousers and shooting gloves. These are designed to eliminate most of the stress from firing a gun dozens of times and are tested for thickness and stiffness by International Shooting Sport Federation standards.

Olympic shooters are also allowed to wear light athletic shoes if they meet the qualifications and standards, such as the maximum thickness of the sole at the toe is 10 millimeters, the height of the shoe can’t exceed two-thirds the length of the shoe wearer’s foot plus 10 millimeters, the top of the shoe’s thickness may not be more than four millimeters and the toe of the sole of the shoe may not extend beyond 10 millimeters from the end of the shoe.

To help their eyes, Olympic shooters are urged to wear protection. The non-shooting eye may be covered by an item not wider than 30 millimeters. An actual side blinder, attached to a hat, headband or glasses, may not be any deeper than 40 millimeters. For ear protection, the device used is not allowed to be a receiver of any kind.

Wow!! And to think that the athletes from the past succeeded without any specialized attire or equipment. We have to acknowledge their determination and athleticism.

No special shoes for Jim Thorpe. In 1912 Jim Thorpe wore different socks and shoes. This wasn’t a fashion statement. On the morning of his competitions, his shoes were stolen. Luckily, Jim ended up finding two shoes in a garbage can. One of the shoes was too big, so he had to wear an extra sock. Wearing these shoes, Jim still won two gold medals that day.