Arlington-bred Olympic swimmer Torri Huske is coming home from Paris a heavily decorated athlete—and a breakout star of the 2024 summer games. This, after missing the podium in the Tokyo Olympics four years ago, at age 18, by a heartbreaking .01 second.
The athlete’s triumphant performances in Paris earned her three gold medals and two silvers. She took gold in her signature event—the 100-meter butterfly—and went on to win gold and break world records, along with her teammates, in both the women’s 4×100 medley relay and the mixed 4×100 medley relay.
She also won silver in the women’s 100-meter freestyle and 4×100 freestyle relay.
“I’d just like to thank everyone back at home for their support,” Huske said in an interview with Arlington Magazine just before heading to the games. “I really appreciate it, and I definitely feel that when I come back.”
Here are five things you may not know about this homegrown phenom:
- She is a rising Junior at Stanford University, where she swims under three-time NCAA Swim Coach of the Year, Greg Meehan. Huske plans to major in design, a concentration she says spans multiple disciplines. “It’s like a mix of engineering—and then I’m choosing to go the sustainability route—but a lot of the classes actually overlap with Mech E (mechanical engineering),” she explains.
- She holds the distinction of becoming one of the first corporate-endorsed college athletes, shortly after a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing college athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness. She signed an endorsement deal with swimsuit company TYR.
- Huske attended Yorktown High School in Arlington from 2017–2021, where she set national high school records in IM and butterfly. In 2022, she became the youngest member ever inducted into the Yorktown High School Hall of Fame.
- From age 5 to 18 she trained at AAC (Arlington Aquatic Club), the county’s year-round competitive swim program. Head Coach Evan Stiles has noted that Huske trained six days a week. They had to travel outside of Arlington to other pools, including The St. James athletic facility in Springfield, Virginia, in the off-season to find places where she could train in a long course pool. Stiles also sought out competitors and races that would challenge her. Huske’s father, Jim, says the AAC training laid the foundation for his daughter’s ultimate success on the world stage. “She’s a small swimmer. I know she’s five-eight, that doesn’t sound small, but everybody else is [around six feet tall],” he observes. “She’s just very efficient. And it’s because of the coaching.”
- Huske’s mother, Ying Weng, grew up in Mao Zedong’s China during the Cultural Revolution. Her family was relocated from Guangzhou to the countryside, where she had to haul water from the river to her home. “It sounds traumatic to us, but it wasn’t traumatic to her because it was all she ever knew,” Huske told Arlington Magazine in an earlier interview. “She still had fun and played with her friends. It was just very different from what we are accustomed to. My mother’s experiences made her a really hard-working person, and that’s where I get my work ethic from. She just wants me to be happy.”
What’s next for the powerhouse athlete? Huske is taking some time away from the spotlight to travel around Europe before returning to Stanford in the fall. Beyond undergrad, she’s considering pursuing a master’s degree.
And yes, she is eyeing another run (make that, swim) at the Olympic games four years from now in Los Angeles.
But for now, the entire family is just enjoying the moment.
“It’s surreal,” says her dad, fresh off the plane from Paris where he and Ying Weng watched their daughter in awe. “It’s surreal to see her competing against…the best athletes in the world—to see people like Katie Ledecky and the other Americans and to be part of that team. You can’t dream it any better than it happened. I’ve never seen Tori so happy.”