Florida International University's swimming and diving program will be well represented at the Olympics yet again as two star swimmers are gearing up to compete.
Oumy Diop and Nicole Frank won't be representing Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics but they are hoping to do their best for their home countries.
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Diop will be representing Senegal while Frank will be representing Uruguay.
PARIS OLYMPICS SWIMMING
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For the two best friends, being together in Paris is a dream come true.
"She's way more than a teammate if I can say like, Nikki is like, literally my bestie, we spend so much time together in FIU and being able to go to the Olympics with her, it’s just like a dream," Diop said.
"I am really lucky that one of my closest friends is going with me too, for her country," Frank said. "So I think I'm really really excited and really proud of where I come from and how I got through all of the things that I had to go through to get to the point that I'm at right now.”
Diop and Frank traveled a long way from their homes to join FIU's swimming and diving team.
"I got in touch with the coach when I was swimming at World Champs in 2022. So we got in contact, we talked a lot, he showed me the campus around. And that's how I kind of decided that I wanted to go there," Diop said.
Diop will compete in the 100m butterfly on Saturday, while Frank will compete in the 200m IM on Aug. 2.
Frank competed in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 when she was just 17, but the Paris Games will be Diop's first.
For FIU, it marks the second consecutive Olympics that they will have a pair of athletes competing. Maha Gouda and Elinah Phillip also competed in the Tokyo Olympics.
Randy Horner, FIU's swimming and diving head coach, said training for the Olympics is no small feat.
“It’s a tough sport. it’s a tough way to go, just because it's a delayed gratification is the way we talk about it in our sport, you train a lot of hours every week, every day, through the years, you go through peaks and valleys of your development," Horner said.
Both Diop and Frank have put in hours of hard work. They admit it's not always easy, but definitely worth it.
"We are both mentally strong, but you know, like, we have up and downs, we're athletes," Frank said.
And when moments do get tough, they both said they think of family.
"Even when I had to leave for the U.S. it was really tough for them because we are really close," Diop said. "They knew that I was going there for my goal and for my dreams, and they supported me, and now they're like, just so proud to say 'yeah, my sister, she's going to the Olympics and stuff.' So yeah, I'm really like really happy for them also."
"My brother and my grandma and most of my family did swimming at some point," Frank said. "So, I think it's like a family thing too. And it's like in my veins.”
