County Proud of Its Olympians

The nation is justifiably proud of its athletes at the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games. They won a total of 97 medals, more than any other nation.

But Orange County can be especially proud of its local athletes. They won almost 15% of the U.S. total.

About 50 athletes who were born and raised in Orange County, attended school here or relocated here to train for the Olympics won 20 medals in Sydney. Fourteen of them are county residents.

That’s as many medals won as Canada, and more than Greece or Spain. In fact, if Orange County were a separate nation, its medal total would be 17th out of the 80 national teams that went to Sydney.

The top medal winners in the county were Dain Blanton of Laguna Beach, who won a gold in beach volleyball, and Jennifer Brundage of Irvine High School and Lori Harrigan of Magnolia High School in Anaheim, who won gold medals as members of the women’s softball team.

Orange County athletes also won medals in swimming, water polo and soccer.

The county has a long history of producing champion swimmers dating back to the 1948 Olympics, when Dr. Sammy Lee won a gold and a bronze in diving, up to Amanda Beard, an Irvine High School grad who took a bronze in Sydney to go with the one gold and two bronze medals she won in Atlanta in 1996. Names of other county medal winners dot the Olympic record book. They include Dwight Stones, Shirley Babashoff and Janet Evans (both five-medal winners in swimming), Ann Meyers Drysdale, Bruce Furniss, Leon Wood and Greg Louganis, who won four gold medals in diving.

But the Olympics means more than medal counts. All the local athletes, not just those who won gold, silver or bronze, were sterling representatives of the nation, their community--and themselves.

As President Reagan told the 1984 U.S. Olympic team: “You will be competing against athletes from many nations. But, most important, you are competing against yourself. All we expect is for you to do your very best, to push yourself just one second faster, one notch higher, one inch further.” Orange County’s members of the U.S. team 2000 did themselves proud.