Living their Olympic dreams: UChicago alumni relish moments on world stage

For the past two weeks, the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris have grabbed the global spotlight. And on world’s stage, two University of Chicago alumni athletes—judo competitor John Jayne, AB’19, and swimmer Jesse Ssengonzi, AB’24—enjoyed triumphs while realizing a lifelong dream.

“I’m still struggling to explain what it felt like,” said Jayne, who won his opening match for Team USA, upsetting an Italian opponent ranked 23 spots ahead of him. “I’ve competed at the world championships, I’ve competed in NCAA wrestling, I’ve been on big stages.

“But this felt like something special. It felt like the Olympics.”

Ssengonzi, who represented Uganda at the Games just months after graduating from the College with a degree in computer science and economics, also had a special moment at the Olympics. The three-time NCAA champion took second in his heat in the men’s 100-meter butterfly, setting a new personal record, a new Ugandan national record (53.76 seconds) and earning the best finish (31st) by a swimmer in the country’s history.

“The atmosphere was absolutely electric—the stands were completely full, even for heats,” Ssengonzi wrote via email. “Obviously there were nerves, but the moment I walked out, the pressure melted away. Before the race is when it really hit me, and I really focused on just enjoying the moment.”

Both UChicagoans qualified for their first Olympics, though both took different paths.

Jayne, a four-year wrestler for UChicago, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the College, later achieved a master’s from King’s College in London, and has since set his full focus on judo—a sport he picked up in his home country of Great Britain when he was three years old.

Nicknamed the “Balkan Falcon,” Jayne shares triple citizenship with Bulgaria, Great Britain, and the U.S.—his mother, Crisina, is Bulgarian, while father, John Sr., is a native of Davenport, Iowa.

His rise in judo accelerated in 2019 when he moved down a weight class to 90 kilograms, leading to his first trip to the Senior World Championships in 2021. At April’s Senior Pan Am-Oceania Championships, Jayne pulled off his biggest win of his career prior to the Olympics, upsetting the 12th-ranked judoka from Brazil to earn a silver medal and cement his status for Team USA.

“Working towards the Olympics was something that’s been kind of a life mission,” added Jayne, who lost his second Olympic match in the final seconds to Korea’s Juyeop Han. “My emotions at that second match, it was a bit heartbreaking. But walking off, I thought about how I got to live the dream here, I got to compete at the Olympics, I got to win at the highest level.

“Not everyone gets to live their dream like that.”

Similarly, Ssengonzi has been working on his craft since he was young. All three of his siblings are swimmers, coached by their late father, Robert, who started a swim club in Uganda, where the family briefly lived. Ssengonzi spent most of his youth swimming in Raleigh, N.C., before landing at UChicago, where he continued to excel with NCAA titles in the 100-meter butterfly (2022 and 2024) and was part of the 2022 champion 400-meter medley relay team.

A dual citizen of Uganda and the U.S., Ssengonzi traveled to Qatar in February for the World Aquatics Championships to compete for the Ugandan national team. There, he set a new Ugandan national record in his signature event, which proved enough to send him to the Olympics through universality placement—a program to help increase the diversity of participating nations at the Games.

Ssengonzi was the lone men’s swimmer representing Uganda in Paris. Since 1984, only seven other men have represented Uganda in Olympic swimming, with Ganzi Mugala previously holding the country’s best finish at the sport (53rd in the 50-meter freestyle in 2012).

“I first represented Uganda when I was 10 years old on the junior national team. It means a lot, to be able to help advance the sport and inspire others,” Ssengonzi said. “I am very proud to represent my country, my family and my heritage well. To get a best time on the highest stage is all I could ask for.”

Both athletes also gave UChicago some credit, too—Ssengonzi thanked the Maroons’ coaching staff for additional training guidance and noted his time in the College “reinforced the importance of patience.”

For Jayne, UChicago taught him resilience.

“UChicago taught me how to fail and then get back up again, how to work very hard and do whatever is needed to be able to just survive and move on to the next stage,” he said. “It taught me grit and determination, which I think definitely helps in the real world—and in sports.”

History of UChicagoans at the Olympics

Jayne and Ssengonzi are the first two UChicagoans to qualify for the Olympics since Liza Merenzon, AB’23, who served as an alternate for the Team USA women’s rhythmic gymnastics team in 2021 in Tokyo. They join Naomy Grand’Pierre, AB’19, who became the first woman to represent Haiti as a swimmer in the 2016 Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her sister, Emillie Grand’Pierre (2020 Tokyo), and brother, Alex Grand’Pierre (2024 Paris), both students of Bowdoin College, later joined her in representing Haiti in the Games. Ben Collins, MBA’16, also competed in the 2016 Paralympics for the Team USA para-cycling team.

The most decorated Olympian in UChicago history is arguably James Lightbody, AB’1907, who won a total of six medals in track and field at the 1904 (St. Louis) and 1906 (Athens, Greece) Games, four of them gold. Mark Catlin, AB’1905, (track and field), and Ethel Lackie, LAB’1924 (swimming), also won gold—Lackie twice—for their performances at the 1904 and 1924 Olympic Games, respectively.