Breakout athletes for the Los Angeles Olympics are already emerging with two years until the Opening Ceremony on July 14, 2028.
You know about the established gold medalists like Katie Ledecky and Noah Lyles. But here’s a look at some of the most exciting on-the-rise athletes on the road to LA:
Kristen Cruz/Taryn Brasher, Beach Volleyball
One can argue Cruz and Brasher are new in name only.
In 2024, Taryn (then) Kloth and Kristen (then) Nuss went into the Olympics ranked No. 2 in the world. Then they had what Brasher called the most devastating moment of her life in the round of 16 underneath the Eiffel Tower.
After two weddings, the team from the unlikeliest of beach origins is on fire in 2026, winning three of their four top-level tournament starts with a 25-1 overall international match record.
In 2028, Olympic beach volleyball returns to its spiritual home in Southern California. Cruz and Brasher are the early best hope for host-nation gold.
Darrell Doucette III, Flag Football
The man they call “Housh” is the American face of flag football, a sport making its Olympic debut in Los Angeles.
After leading the Americans to their fifth straight world title in 2024, he was MVP of the Fanatics Flag Football Classic this past March — guiding the national team to a 3-0 record, including outscoring opponents (teams with current and former NFL stars) 106-44.
Doucette, a 5-foot-7 37-year-old, is a New Orleans native who in 2005 was displaced with his family to Atlanta due to Hurricane Katrina. He was a high school state champion in bowling (has recorded 300-score games) and MVP of the track team, then played intramural flag football at Xavier University of Louisiana. That’s where teammates noticed his resemblance to Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh, hence the nickname.
Chloe Humphrey, Lacrosse
Lacrosse returns to the Olympic medal program for the first time since the 1908 London Games. The first Olympic women’s tournament will be held in 2028, and the U.S. is ranked No. 1 in the world in the sixes discipline that will be held at BMO Stadium.
Expect Humphrey to be there. In 2025, the North Carolina Tar Heel became the first freshman to win the Tewaaraton Award as the NCAA Player of the Year. In 2026, Humphrey tied the NCAA single-season goals record (109).
Jaelyn Liu, Fencing
In women’s foil, the U.S. boasts the 2024 individual Olympic gold and silver medalists Lee Kiefer and Lauren Scruggs, who were also part of the gold medal team in Paris.
Now Liu enters the picture. The 17-year-old won world junior titles in 2025 and 2026 and was part of the 2025 senior world title-winning team (with Kiefer, Scruggs and Emily Jing).
Cooper Lutkenhaus, Track and Field
In the last year, Lutkenhaus, an 800m runner, became the youngest American to compete at a World Outdoor Track and Field Championships, became the youngest World Indoor Track and Field champion in an individual event and beat the 2024 Olympic gold and silver medalists in international races.
Oh yeah, he also completed his junior year of classes at Northwest High School outside of Dallas.
Luka Mijatovic, Swimming
In 2025, Mijatovic became, at 16, the youngest U.S. male swimmer to compete at a World Championships since Michael Phelps’ world debut in 2001.
Mijatovic, a rising high school senior from Pleasanton, California, holds 16 individual national age group records in 25-yard pools or 50-meter pools among the 13-14, 15-16 and 17-18 divisions (mostly in distance freestyle events).
Next year, he is set to matriculate at the University of Texas, where the head coach is Phelps’ career-long coach, Bob Bowman.
Then in 2028, Mijatovic turns 19 years old, which was Phelps’ age when he started racking up Olympic hardware in 2004.
ElliReese Niday, Diving
In 2025, Niday became, at age 13, one of the youngest divers in history to earn a senior U.S. title. She was too young, in fact, to be eligible for last summer’s World Championships.
But age won’t be a problem come 2028. Niday’s specialty is the platform, where the U.S. women haven’t won a medal since Laura Wilkinson’s eighth-to-first stunner in 2000.
Hezly Rivera, Gymnastics
Rivera, then 16, was the youngest U.S. athlete across all sports at the Paris Olympics. She competed strictly in qualifying in 2024, while veterans Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles carried the load in the team final.
Then in 2025, Rivera was the only returning member of the Olympic team to compete on the elite level. She seized the moment in the spotlight, becoming the youngest U.S. all-around champion in eight years.
Time will tell if Biles, Lee, Carey (who just returned to elite) and Chiles contend for another Olympic team, but for now Rivera is a leading woman.
Ja’Kobe Tharp, Track and Field
Tharp, who indulges in a fast-food routine before every big meet, broke the world record in the 110m hurdles at the NCAA Championships on June 10. He then turned pro, forgoing his senior season at Auburn.
Tharp joins a loaded group of U.S. men’s high hurdlers, along with 2024 Olympic gold medalist Grant Holloway, 2025 World champion Cordell Tinch and Jamal Britt, a 27-year-old who has never made an Olympic or world team yet just became the fifth-fastest man in history. Only three can make the team for LA.
Gretchen Walsh, Swimming
Walsh isn’t a new name — she won relay gold and individual silver at the Paris Olympics — but she has blossomed in the last two years, going from whom critics called a “bathtub swimmer” to the world’s best in three different individual events.
She has broken the 100m butterfly world record four times and last month broke the 50m freestyle world record and swam the second-fastest time in history in the 50m butterfly.
Walsh could go into the LA Games with a chance to become the fourth American woman to win three individual swimming golds at one Olympics after Debbie Meyer (1968), Janet Evans (1988) and Katie Ledecky (2016).
Olivia Weaver, Squash
Squash makes its Olympic debut in 2028 at the Comcast Squash Center at Universal Studios, and the U.S. has an early medal contender.
It’s Olivia Weaver, who as a 5-year-old held not dolls, but a racket, motivated by the candy rewards for target practice at the Philadelphia Cricket Club.
Weaver, now a 30-year-old pro out of Princeton, is ranked fourth in the world (behind three women from powerhouse Egypt).
