Talk about an eventful two days at the 2024 Paris Olympics for former Texas A&M track and field athletes Bryce Deadmon and Shamier Little.
On Friday, the two Aggies made up half of Team USA’s mixed 4×400-meter relay that set a world record with a time of 3 minutes and 7.41 seconds in the event’s prelims. In Saturday’s final, the squad captured a silver medal in 3:07.74, finishing behind the Netherlands’ time of 3:07.43.
The duo teamed up with LSU’s Vernon Norwood and Arkansas’ Kaylyn Brown to form an All-SEC relay team. The U.S. was in the lead for much of the race, but a late push by the Netherlands’ Femke Bol with a 47.93 leg time beat out Brown and allowed the Dutch to capture the gold medal. It was the fastest female leg time in the race.
After Norwood began the relay with a 44.50 leg, Little, in her first Olympics, followed up with a time of 49.40 seconds. Deadmon took the baton and raced it to Brown with a leg time of 44.70. Brown finished the competition in the next 49.14 seconds.
Deadmon is the most decorated of Aggies competing in this year’s track and field events, having won a gold medal with Team USA’s men’s 4x400m relay and a bronze medal with the mixed 4x400m relay at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when the event made its debut.
Deadmon competed for A&M from 2016 to 2021 and was a part of the program’s top 4x400m relay in 2019. Little was on the track for the Aggies from 2013 to 2016.