30 American athletes to watch at the 2024 Paris Olympics
By Nick Villano
25. Anna Hall
Track and Field
We were robbed to see Anna Hall in Tokyo. She suffered a devastating injury during the Olympic trials, breaking her foot on a barrier during the 100-meter hurdles. She would later need knee surgery on top of that. It was something that could hold other lesser athletes down, but Hall used it as motivation to come back better and stronger than ever.
After the injury, Hall transferred to the University of Florida. That’s when it became clear she was still one of the best athletes in the world. She won championships in both the pentathlon and heptathlon while in Gainesville.
At last year’s U.S. Indoor Championships, Hall broke the North American pentathlon record with 5,004 points. She’s one of five female athletes to ever break 5,000 points in the event, and she’s the first American (again, we love that). If Hall repeats that type of performance in Paris, she’s leaving with a gold medal.
The story is wonderful, and the achievements could be plentiful. She does have some incredibly stiff competition in Nafissatou Thiam (Belgium) and Adrianna Sułek (Poland), who are two of the three ladies to ever score better than Hall in history.