Rochester ties to Summer Olympics 2024: Here's who's heading to Paris

Anyone with plans to watch the Summer Olympics that begin later this month in Paris, should come across athletes with ties to the Rochester area.

When you see Meghan Musnicki, of Naples, understand she is a champion who has already triumphed by making it to her fourth Olympics. Musnicki, 41, has two gold medals for Team USA in the sport of rowing.

Other athletes with local ties followed their dreams in other parts of the world, like Rush-Henrietta graduate Lanae-Tava Thomas, one of the greatest athletes in Section V track and field history.

Thomas is on the Jamaican Olympic Team, after she qualified for the women's 200-meter dash, while Penfield graduate Kevin Penev, a gymnast, has made it onto the team from Bulgaria.

The progress of Pittsford's Magnus Sheffield, a 22-year-old professional cyclist who works overseas, has led him to a spot on the USA national team. Sheffield is among the members of USA Cycling's road team, which races other cyclists and, when it comes to time trials, the clock.

Brynn King is a fifth-year senior at Roberts Wesleyan University, where she is coached by Jenn Suhr of Riga, an Olympic gold medalist during her track and field career, and husband Rick Suhr. King, who qualified in the pole vault, is on the United States track and field team.

Professional tennis player Jessica Pegula, who was born in Buffalo, is one of five singles players on the United States team. Her mother, Kim Pegula, a prominent owner of the National Football League's Buffalo Bills and the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres, grew up in Fairport.

James Johnson, a native of the city of Rochester and a graduate of Edison Tech in the Rochester City School District, has worked as a full-time journalist covering high school sports for the Democrat and Chronicle since 1996. Follow him @jjDandC on X (Twitter). You can contact him atJAMESJ@gannett.com