Queens welcomes home Olympians

Borough President Melinda Katz welcomes the Olympians back home. Photo attribution to Nicole Yu.

by Nicole Yu, staff reporter

Borough President Melinda Katz welcomes the Olympians back home. Photo attribution to Nicole Yu.
Borough President Melinda Katz welcomes the Olympians back home. Photo attribution to Nicole Yu.

Queens Borough President, Melinda Katz, hosted an event to commemorate athletes who competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics representing Queens.

Unfortunately, many Olympians weren’t able to make it to the event, but few were. It consisted of Natasha Hastings, Dalilah Muhammad, Deajah Stevens, and Jennifer Wu. Hastings, Muhammed and Stevens competed in the track and field section of the Olympics, whereas Wu competed in table tennis.

This event took place right outside the Queens Borough Hall on Monday, September 12th at 12pm. It started with a speech about Queens, presented by Borough President Katz. She also spoke of how everyone is honored to have people representing Queens.

Katz introduced the four women and presented each one with an award. She shared each of their backgrounds and the schools they graduated from.

Natasha Hastings graduated from the University of South California. She won the women’s four by four relay race and received gold medals in the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the 2007, 2008 and 2009 World Championships. She earned silver medals for the 2013 and 2015 World Championships.

Deajah Stevens was Cardozo High School’s graduating class of 2014. She won seventh place in the recent Rio 2016 Olympic Games. In high school, she was among the top 10 of the 200, 300, 400 indoor events.

Jennifer Wu has been playing table tennis for 17 years. This year, she has earned her title as the 2016 North American World Cup Champion.

Dalilah Muhammad went to Cardozo High School and the University of Southern California. She came from a family of public servants and won a gold medal for track and field in the Olympics. Muhammad was the first U.S. woman to win the women’s 400-meter in 51.43 seconds. She also participated in the World Championships.

“Thank you for the support and warm welcome home. I’m so happy to bring this home for Queens. A message for the young: young people always say they wanna be like me, but strive to be ten times better than me. I used to keep my goals to myself because I thought my goals were too big,” track and field runner Dalilah Muhammad said.

 

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