Local athletes make Sarasota proud at Tokyo Olympics

Two of Sarasota's four athletes at the Olympics are coming home with hardware.

By Ryan Kohn
| 9:07 a.m. July 28, 2021

Emma Weyant won a silver medal in the Women's 400-Meter IM at the Olympics on Saturday night. Photo courtesy Mike Lewis/USA Swimming.

Sarasota
Sports

When Sarasota's athletes return from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, they will not be empty-handed.

Two athletes have earned medals at the games and one has a chance for more.

The highlights began on Saturday night — Sunday morning in Tokyo — as swimmer Emma Weyant, 19, earned a silver medal in the Women's 400-meter Individual Medley.

Weyant, who attended Riverview High and also swam with the Sarasota Sharks, entered the event's finals as the top qualifier — she swam the event in 4:33.55, more than a second faster than anyone else. Weyant managed to best that time in the finals, setting a new personal record with a 4:32.76 swim.

Watching and waiting

Olympic athletes are under tremendous pressure to perform, but that pressure is not limited to themselves.

It spreads to their loved ones watching at home.

Jennifer Tucker-Mogenson, the mother of shooter Mary Tucker, said watching her daughter perform is always a stressful affair — not because of the results, but because of how a failure to medal may look from the outside. In shooting, one mistake can be the difference between a win and missing a medal entirely.

“If something happens and she doesn't end up on the podium, people won't understand how hard she has worked or the sacrifices she has made just to get to that competition,” Tucker-Mogenson said. “Personally, I don't care if she medals. I just want the world to know how hard she has worked and how much she deserves to be there.”

Tucker-Mogenson said her favorite moments watching her daughter are the blink-and-you-miss-them ones: a smile after a particularly good shot or a tense moment.

“Seeing those made my day,” Tucker-Mogenson said.

She saw a lot of them on Tuesday when Tucker earned her silver medal.

Kristi Cardoni-Weyant, the mother of swimmer Emma Weyant, watched her daughter's 400-meter IM swim from Daiquiri Deck on Siesta Key alongside approximately 250 others. Cardoni-Weyant said she almost passed out from the anticipation of the race — something Weyant noticed when NBC showed her video of the party after she finished.

Despite her outward appearance, Cardoni-Weyant said she had faith her daughter would do well.

"When she won the prelims, I had an idea," Cardoni-Weyant said. "I knew it wasn't going to be an easy path, but I believed she would do well in the finals."

Weyant did, taking a silver medal. Cardoni-Weyant said she talked to her daughter later that night. Before saying anything else, Weyant told her mom she wished they were together in Tokyo. Being the competitor she is, Weyant also said — despite setting a new personal record time — she wished she had won gold.

Cardoni-Weyant reassured Weyant that she made everyone at home proud.

"To see this 19-year-old kid so lovingly embraced by all of Sarasota, it has exceeded my expectations," Cardoni-Weyant said.

It wasn't enough to win gold thanks to a near-perfect swim from Japan's Yui Ohashi, who finished in 4:32.08, 0.68 seconds better than Weyant.

If Weyant was disappointed by her finish, she didn't show it.

“Honestly, this is crazier than anything I could have dreamed,” Weyant said in a post-race interview on NBC. “I’m just so happy to be here with the best in the world. It’s so much fun.”

On Tuesday, shooter Mary Tucker joined Weyant as Olympians from Sarasota bringing home a medal. Tucker and her partner, Lucas Kozeniesky, took a silver medal in the Mixed 10-meter Air Rifle.

Tucker, a Sarasota Military Academy grad and a national champion at the University of Kentucky, previously finished sixth in the Women’s 10-meter Air Rifle at the Olympics. She’s not quite done, either. Tucker will compete in the Women’s 50-meter Rifle 3-Positions on Friday night. Qualification will begin at 11 p.m., and the finals will begin at approximately 3 a.m.

“I’ve been treating this as just another competition,” Tucker said during a press conference after her silver-medal performance. “Luckily, I had a great partner who has been to the Olympics before. He's been very helpful and everyone at home has been very supportive. I think the biggest challenge is that everyone here is competing at a very high level.

Mary Tucker and her partner, Lucas Kozeniesky, took a silver medal in the Mixed 10-meter Air Rifle. Photo courtesy UK Athletics.

“I’m going to keep doing the same thing that I have been doing (for the Rifle 3-Positions event). It’s a little more difficult because I haven’t been able to practice with this gun specifically for the last week or so. But I've had a lot of training that I trust from home, so I'm going to do what I always do.”

Not every Olympian from Sarasota will return with hardware, but those who will not accomplished something anyway. Rower Clark Dean helped the Men’s Four to a spot in the event’s finals and, once there, to a fifth-place finish (5:48.85), 6.09 seconds behind gold-medal winner Australia. It was a tough assignment; the U.S. has not earned any medals in the Men’s Four since 2012.

Skateboarder Jake Ilardi also drew a tough assignment: competing in the first-ever Street skateboard competition in Olympic history. Ilardi qualified 11th out of 20 skaters at the event; unfortunately for Ilardi, only the top eight advanced to the finals. Ilardi had a chance to advance thanks to high scores in the individual trick stage of qualifying, but ultimately could not land enough tricks to make up for scores of 6.85 and 6.75 on his initial two runs. The event was eventually won by Japan’s Yuto Horigome.

author

Ryan Kohn

Ryan Kohn is the sports editor for Sarasota and East County and a Missouri School of Journalism graduate. He was born and raised in Olney, Maryland. His biggest inspirations are Wright Thompson and Alex Ovechkin. His strongest belief is that mint chip ice cream is unbeatable.