Medals and master’s degrees: The most educated Paris 2024 Olympic athletes

The Paris 2024 Olympics might be over, but as some of the most notable Olympic athletes have proven, there’s no end to learning. 

As many return to their training for the next tournament, some return to their day jobs or their studies. 

That’s right, some of these athletes competing at the highest level are just like us — working a nine-to-five as engineers and shop assistants or logging 8 a.m. classes and all-nighters as students at one of the best sports colleges.

Most of the high-profile athletes do what they do full-time.

American gymnast Simone Biles gave up UCLA for her professional career. Now that she’s cinched a few more medals, she’s ready to return to her studies, enrolling in the University of the People.

The same goes for French swimmer Léon Marchand, who left Arizona State University and is leaving people wondering about his next steps. Spoiler alert: Marchand will either follow his coach, Bob Bowman, to the University of Texas or leave education to go pro.

But this isn’t the case for everyone.

Australia’s Ella Beere (L) and Australia’s Alyssa Bull (R) compete in the women’s kayak double 500m heats canoe sprint competition in the Paris 2024 Olympics. Source: AFP

Even professionals need something to fall back on

A career in sports, especially one that takes you to the Olympics, takes you to the highest of highs and then drops you down a cliff. 

“Most Olympic athletes are competing in arenas that are normally pretty empty,” says Apolo Ohno, USA’s first male short-track speed skating Olympic champion, to CNN. “And there’s not a lot of prize money. There’s no salary, depending on which sport it is, obviously in skiing, swimming, and in gymnastics, there’s some great sponsor dollars, but think about all the sports that are non-traditional. There’s just no real market for that.”

So while some athletes get the better end of the stick, like LeBron James and Steph Curry return to the court and do not miss a beat, others like Australian canoeist Alyssa Bull return to firefighting and New Zealand canoeist Kurtis Imrie goes back to being an electrician.

This leads us to a good point: it’s handy to have something to fall back on.

In an earlier interview with Study International, 2008 Miss World Malaysia winner Dr. Wincci Soo puts it plainly: “Winning the title [of a beauty pageant] puts you in the news for a year, or maybe a month or a week. If you don’t have a new portfolio or you don’t have new skills, you will be replaced by someone else very soon. So I decided, if anything, I can still fall back on education.” 

And while you can succeed without going to university, it never hurts to have some sort of qualification.

Take a look at some of the most educated athletes who represented their countries for the Paris 2024 Olympics below: 

If these athletes can go for postgraduate degrees while fighting for a spot on the Olympic podium, you can get out of bed and make it to your morning lectures. Source: AFP

The education of notable Olympic athletes in 2024

Malaika Mihambo

Malaika Mihambo needs no introduction, but here’s one anyway. She’s the 2020 Olympic champion and 2022 world champion in the long jump, and in the Paris 2024 Olympics, Mihambo represented Team Germany and added a silver medal in the long jump to her accolades.

Born to a Tanzanian father and a German mother, Mihambo pursued her undergraduate studies in political science at the University of Mannheim through a sports scholarship. Her exemplary performance on the field and in school earned her the German Sports Aid Foundation’s “Sports Scholarship Holder of the Year” in 2014. 

Mihambo is currently pursuing a master’s programme in environmental sciences at the University of Hagen, something she wishes to interconnect with her advocacy and social impact work with Malaika Herzsprung e.V., a charity she founded to fund families who cannot afford athletic club memberships for their primary school children.

Not only did Hugues Fabrice Zango win Burkina Faso’s first Olympic medal, he’s a PhD holder too. Now that’s a high achiever. Source: AFP

Hugues Fabrice Zango

Hugues Fabrice Zango is perhaps Burkina Faso’s biggest pride and joy. Aside from being the world indoor record holder in the triple jump with a jump of 18.07 metres set in 2021 and the reigning world champion, he also bagged the country’s first-ever Olympic medal in the 2020 games.

Zango earned a master’s in Electronics, Electrical Energy, and Automation from the University of Artois (Hauts-de-France, France) in 2018. He then went on to earning his PhD in Electrical Engineering at the same university.

“When I earned the diploma, I had the impression that I hadn’t finished learning yet, that there were still things for me to learn,” said Zango in an interview with the Olympics media team. “That’s why I signed up for the next step, to continue to learn.

One of the most notable Olympic athletes is 26-year-old Aitana Bonmatí, a midfielder from Spain’s women’s football team. Source: AFP

Aitana Bonmatí

Considered one of the best players in women’s football, Aitana Bonmatí Conca of the Spain national team is only just getting started despite the team falling short in the Paris 2024 Olympics.

At 26 as of 2024, Bonmatí has been awarded the Ballon d’Or (an annual football award honouring the best-performing player of the previous season — football legend Lionel Messi has eight of them), named The Best FIFA Women’s Player Award for the 2022–23 season, helped Spain win the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and bagged the title as the tournament’s best player, and was the first footballer to win the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year — just to name a few accolades.

Academically, Bonmatí doesn’t lag behind either. She has a bachelor’s in physical activity and sports science from Ramon Llull University and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in sports management at the Johan Cruyff Institute.

Team USA duo Ian Barrows and Hans Henken competing in the men’s 49er skiff event during the Paris 2024 Olympics. Source: AFP

Hans Henken

Participating in the Olympics seems to just be a side quest for Team USA sailing representative Hans Henken, who secured a bronze medal in the Men’s Skiff event in the games. 

Now, he can put his focus and use the BS and MS in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Stanford University for his true goal of becoming an astronaut. After all, Henken’s aerospace engineering studies focused on rocket propulsion, something he believes will help him on his journey to space.

“I wanted to learn how things are made, how things work, and I wanted to work on really hard problems, so combining engineering with being an astronaut just led me to be like okay, let’s build rockets,” said Henken in an interview with the Olympics media team. 

No Olympic medals for Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce this year, unfortunately. Source: AFP

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce

Team Jamaica’s superstar sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce ended her fifth and final Olympics without adding to her existing three Olympic gold medals and eight podiums, but while it was a disappointment for herself and her fans, she’s ready for the next phase of her life.

Fraser-Pryce graduated from the University of Technology with a BS in Child and Adolescent Development in November 2012, the same year she defended her 100-metre title at the London 2012 Olympics. 

While there was news in 2016 that she would pursue a Master of Science in Applied Psychology at the University of the West Indies (UWI), no news has come out of this quite yet. However, Fraser-Pryce did receive the Honorary Doctor of Laws from UWI and the University of Technology as a testament to her exceptional contributions to the world of athletics and beyond. 

@bleacherreport Austrailian breakdancer Rachael Gunn had to run it back (via @Jeanos) #olympics #austrailia #breakdancing #raygun ♬ original sound – bleacherreport

Rachael Gunn

Possibly one of the most notable Olympic athletes from the 2024 games, Rachael Gunn was Australia’s representative for breaking, or breakdancing, as it’s more commonly known.

Gunn, who breakdances under the nickname Raygun, used original moves that failed to earn her a single point throughout her three matches, eliminating her from the competition. However, it’s probably worth noting that while Gunn’s moves might be unconventional, she’s definitely one of the more academically inclined ones on the dance floor. 

Gunn has a BA in Contemporary Music and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Macquarie University, where she also works as a lecturer. Her PhD thesis was on “Deterritorialising gender in Sydney’s breakdancing scene: a B-girl’s experience of B-boying.”