Worldwide Olympic Partner Visa has announced that it will be supporting 117 athletes on their journey to the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024, as part of its longstanding Team Visa initiative.
The Team Visa roster for Paris 2024 marks the largest and most diverse group of Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls in the programme’s history, representing more than 60 countries/territories and 40 sports, including new addition breaking.
The 117 athletes selected have already won 175 Olympic and Paralympic medals collectively, with 15 members of Team Visa vying to compete in their first Olympic or Paralympic Games.
Members include Iga Swiatek (tennis, Poland), Sky Brown (skateboarding, Great Britain), Teresa Perales (Para swimming, Spain), Kanoa Igarashi (surfing, Japan), and first-time Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls Qingyi Liu (breaking, China), Rasheed Broadbell (athletics, Jamaica), Ardan Galymuly (goalball, Kazakhstan) and Jonathan White (Para canoe, Great Britain).
The roster also includes USA sprinter Noah Lyles – the reigning 100m and 200m world champion who won bronze in the 200m at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
“Being on Team Visa is an honour,” said the 26-year-old, who also won gold in the 200m at the Youth Olympic Games Nanjing 2024.
“Visa was instrumental in helping me navigate the obstacles of Tokyo 2020, and I am happy I have their support on the road to Paris 2024.”
Lyles joined fellow Team Visa athletes from around the world at the recent Team Visa Summit in Paris for a two-day, creator-led content masterclass focused on brand immersion and best practices for how to tell their own stories within the broader creator economy.
Guided by cultural influencers and best-in-class social media creators, the athletes – who have a combined 45 million social followers between them – learned to express themselves through their passion points across art, technology, music, sport, fashion and food, while also learning hands-on social platform tips for elevating their personal brand and storytelling prowess.
Lyles added: “Being with so many inspiring athletes at the Team Visa Summit is cool enough, but having a partner like Visa bring in game-changing creators to help me elevate my own personal brand beyond sport and connect better with fans worldwide makes it even more energising.”
The Summit also saw athletes take part in content challenges and collaborative sessions that included learning a new sport, creating an exclusive music track, trying their hand at street art, and capturing trending social media content around Paris.
“Today, athletes have the power to tell their own stories, transform fans into community, and generate commerce through their own creations,” said Frank Cooper, Chief Marketing Officer, Visa.
“We gathered the Team Visa athletes in Paris to help them further develop their skills as creators and find new and effective ways to communicate, and engage and inspire people around the world.”
The Team Visa athletes also met young people from Sport Dans La Ville, a leading association for professional integration through sport in France, highlighting Etienne Bardelli’s inspiring mural in Stade Elisabeth to celebrate the community and incentivise youth sports participation.
Team Visa for Paris 2024 continues the company’s longstanding support for athletes from around the world as they prepare for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Since 2000, the programme has championed more than 600 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, who were all selected based on their athletic achievements, community involvement and alignment with Visa’s core values of equality, access and inclusion.