Diana Taurasi chases sixth Olympic gold in Paris

Diana Taurasi, during a match in Tokyo 2020. GETTY IMAGES

The American basketball player has been participating in Olympic Games for 20 years. Tokyo 2020 looked like the ‘last dance’. In the Japanese event she said goodbye with a joke saying she would return in Paris. In the end, she will be in her sixth Games and seeks to extend her gold medal haul.

Diana Taurasi’s record is splendid. It is difficult to find a performance like hers for so long. Her specialty is winning competitions, and she has been doing it since she played basketball at the University of Connecticut.

Before becoming a professional player, the 42-year-old already won three NCAA championships. Then she made the jump to the WNBA. She was already a star. It was 2004 and she was called up to play in the Athens Games, and that was the beginning of her love affair with the world’s top sporting competition.

Taurasi has played in every Olympic Games since then and has always won the gold medal and has never lost a game. No one in basketball can say the same. Now she can increase that record to six gold medals. For USA Basketball, it would be its eighth consecutive gold medal in women’s tournament.

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She has also won four World Championship medals with the United States national team, three gold and one bronze. She has always been a very important player for the team, and has been valued as a great basketball star from a very young age.

In terms of Games appearances, only one person equals Taurasi. Spain’s Rudy Fernandez has followed the same cycle, since Athens 2004, and in Paris he will also be playing in his sixth Olympic Games, but his record is far behind that of the Californian player. Fernandez has two silver medals and one bronze.

The United States are the favourites in this sport, in both the men’s and women’s categories. Though Taurasi is not taking the gold medal for granted. “I think as a team we still have a lot to prove. That’s from someone who always gives her all to make her team the best,” she said.

Another record she could achieve in Paris 2024 is to become the top scorer in Olympic Games history. She is 74 points behind her former USA teammate Lisa Leslie.

Taurasi has been playing for the same 20 years in the world’s best club competition, the WNBA, and she has three more championships there. Always in the Phoenix Mercury jersey. She is also the all-time leading scorer in that competition.

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The calendar of this competition has allowed many players to play part of the year in Europe and another part in the United States. This is also the case of Diana Taurasi. 

She has won the top European basketball competition, the Euroleague, six times playing in Russia, four times with Spartak Moscow and twice with Ekaterinburg, as well as winning domestic competitions in Russia and Turkey.

Taurasi says she feels the same passion for basketball now as she did when she was a teenager. She doesn’t want to pass up any opportunity to play with the best. If she wins her sixth Olympic gold in Paris, it will be time to ask her if she will hold out until Los Angeles 2028, the Olympic Games in her native California.



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