"Time has gone by quick"- Lydia Ko in search for her third Olympics medal after taking bronze at Tokyo and silver at Rio
Lydia Ko of New Zealand has two Olympic medals already, and she's in Paris this year to try and add an unprecedented third. No one in the men's game has multiple medals, so Ko is already a historic figure at the Summer Games. She's one of the few who have even competed in three editions, beginning at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The quadrennial nature of the tournament means that someone has to be fairly old to compete in multiple Olympics. Ko is just 27, so she got in early in 2016 and could even compete at the 2020 Tokyo Games (held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Either way, she's impressed with how quickly time has flown.
As per the Olympic Golf's X account, she recently said:
"I'm obviously super excited to represent New Zealand for my third Olympics. Time has gone by quick. To have been able to medal in the past two games, I feel very fortunate about that and excited to give it a good run again this week."
Lydia Ko took home a silver in 2016 and a bronze medal in 2021, meaning she's earned two of the three possible podium outcomes. The only one left for her to conquer is the gold medal, and Ko will have a lot of competition for it. That includes USA's Nelly Korda, the world's number-one ranked golfer.
“It would be like a Cinderella story" - Lydia Ko on aiming for gold at Paris Olympics 2024
If she finishes on the podium this year, Lydia Ko will be the first golfer to win three medals at the Olympics. If she wins gold, she'd have a unique feat to her name: all three individual medals.
Winning a bronze, a silver, as well as a gold would be pretty impressive in just three runs. Speaking to the New Zealand talk-radio network Newstalk ZB, Ko said (via The New Zealand Herald):
“It would be like a Cinderella story if I was to win the gold. But I know that I’m here alongside the best female golfers, so this is not going to be easy. I’m going to just focus on my game and try to play my best around the golf course and see where that puts me by the end of Saturday.”
As for a possible run at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, the 27-year-old said she's not a long-term planner, adding that the Paris Games might be her last appearance at the Olympics.
Lydia Ko said:
“I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow so I definitely don’t know if I’m going to be still around playing when the LA Games are on. If I am competitively playing around that period of time, my goal would be to qualify again for the LA Olympics, but I think at the back of my mind I’m trying to treat it as my last hurrah and give it my all here."
"You never know what might happen down the road, so as much as I want to bring in my A-game, I really just want to enjoy the Games and enjoy being here for my third Olympics," she added.
Competing in three Olympics is rare, but four is a trivia fact that extremely few athletes have achieved.