Vanderbilt graduate student Veronica Fraley and alumna Lily Williams, A&S ‘16, were among the 592 athletes to compete for the United States at the Olympic Games in Paris this week. Williams took home a gold medal on Wednesday for Team U.S.A. in the women’s track cycling team pursuit final. Fraley, competing in the discus, was unable to advance past qualifying, placing 13th in her Olympic debut.
Fraley earned a third-place finish at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. in the discus and punched her ticket to Paris to become just the sixth Vanderbilt athlete ever to compete in the Games. The Raleigh, N.C. native had an excellent season with the Black and Gold, becoming an NCAA Champion in the Discus while earning SEC Field Athlete of the Year and All-American honors.
The graduate student posted tweets regarding her rent and payment by the university in the lead-up to her event at the Olympics that quickly caught celebrity attention.
In Paris, Fraley launched a top throw of 62.54-meters in the discus, placing her in 13th out of a field of 32 athletes. She ended up falling one place, and 0.09 meters, short as the twelfth place athlete in front of her qualified for the final with a 62.63-meter throw. Fraley’s throw was shorter than both her efforts in the Olympic Trials (62.85-meters) and NCAA Championships (63.66-meters). While she didn’t qualify for the finals later that week, she was still able to compete with some of the best athletes in the world. Her Olympic Trials throw would have earned her 9th in the medal round in Paris. Fraley, just 24 years old, will now look to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Williams, now a two-time Olympian, competed in the women’s track cycling team pursuit final. The Tallahassee, Fla. native earned a bronze medal in the same event at the 2020 Tokyo Games and has now added gold to her personal trophy cabinet, the United States’s first in the event.
She is now the only two-time Olympic medalist in Vanderbilt history.
Williams and her teammates, Chloe Dygert, Kristen Faulkner and Jennifer Valente, beat New Zealand in the gold medal round with a time of 4:04.306. The team came second behind New Zealand in the qualifying round and beat Great Britain in the first round to secure themselves a spot in the finals. Williams began cycling competitively after she graduated Vanderbilt, where she ran middle distance as a former member of Vanderbilt’s Cross Country and Track and Field teams. She now becomes the first female Vanderbilt athlete, and just the second ever, to win a gold medal at the Olympics.
