Identical twins vying for the same spot

Ahead of the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, the McCann twins spoke to Olympics.com about the years of work they have put in for a single place on the Olympic team.

Teammates. Competitors. Identical twins.

U.S. Sailing’s Marshall and Ford McCann have both dreamt of representing the United States at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 for a long time, and they’ve always known only one of them could be selected.

That’s not how they look at it, though.

For the first 18 years of their lives, the twins shared almost everything: friends, hobbies, a bedroom – even Olympic dreams. According to Ford, around “a 99 percentile of our life that was spent within 50 feet of each other.”

After choosing different universities and living across the country from one another for four years, the duo has been back together since the summer of 2022, when they began campaigning for Paris.

They recently returned from 2024 ILCA 7 World Championship in Adelaide, Australia, where they emerged as the top two Americans in their class.

Kicking off this Saturday (February 17), they will go head-to-head against each other and 35 other athletes at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, where just one person will be named to the team.

The United States still needs to obtain an Olympic quota for the ILCA 7 class at the 2024 Last Chance Regatta in April in Hyéres, France to send a boat to the Summer Games. – Full report

Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Program*:
Men’s One Person Dinghy – ILCA 7 (41)
Women’s One Person Dinghy – ILCA 6 (41)
Mixed Two Person Dinghy – 470 (19)
Men’s Skiff – 49er (20)
Women’s Skiff – 49erFX (20)
Men’s Kiteboard – Formula Kite Class (20)
Women’s Kiteboard – Formula Kite Class (20)
Men’s Windsurfing – iQFOiL (24)
Women’s Windsurfing – iQFOiL (24)
Mixed Multihull – Nacra 17 (19)
* Quota per event in parenthesis but does not include Universality Places (2 men, 2 women)

Venue: Marseille, France
Dates: July 28-August 9

Details:
• Paris website: https://www.paris2024.org/en/the-olympic-games-paris-2024/
• World Sailing microsite: https://paris2024.sailing.org/