T&T-born Suri­name Olympic gold medal win­ning swim­mer An­tho­ny Nesty and Todd De Sor­bo were on Thurs­day named by USA Swim­ming as the US Olympic head coach­es in 2024, with DeS­or­bo tabbed to lead the women’s team and Nesty giv­en the reins to guide the men’s squad.

Both coach­es cur­rent­ly lead two of the most promi­nent col­lege pro­grammes in the coun­try, with DeS­or­bo hav­ing pro­pelled the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia women to three con­sec­u­tive Na­tion­al Col­le­giate Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NCAA) Cham­pi­onship ti­tles, while Nesty coach­es the high-pow­ered Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da men’s team, and has re­cent­ly helped bring the Gator women back to promi­nence, in­clud­ing win­ning the 2023 South­east­ern Con­fer­ence (SEC) ti­tle.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, DeS­or­bo and Nesty as­sumed the same roles at the 2022 World Cham­pi­onships, where the USA dom­i­nat­ed the medal ta­ble with 17 gold and 45 to­tal medals. That ap­point­ment came af­ter both were as­sis­tant coach­es at the Tokyo Olympics.

At the 2023 World Cham­pi­onships, Nesty was again named an as­sis­tant coach for the US team, while DeS­or­bo opt­ed out to spend more time at home—and re­set for the Olympic year—with his as­so­ciate head coach at UVA, Blaire An­der­son, head­ing to Fukuo­ka in his place.

Born in T&T in 1967, Nesty mi­grat­ed to Suri­name with his fam­i­ly when he was sev­en months old, and he start­ed swim­ming at the age of five and won an Olympic gold medal in the 100-me­tre but­ter­fly event in 1988, beat­ing Amer­i­can favourite Matt Bion­di by one one-hun­dredth of a sec­ond in a time of 53 sec­onds.

Bob Bow­man (Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty) and Car­ol Cap­i­tani (Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas) were the US head coach­es at the 2023 World Cham­pi­onships.

DeS­or­bo put Kate Dou­glass, Alex Walsh, Gretchen Walsh and Max­ine Park­er on the US women’s ros­ter at the 2023 Worlds, with that trio com­bin­ing for 11 medals, six of which came from Dou­glass.

Dou­glass won the women’s 200 IM in­di­vid­u­al­ly, go­ing 1-2 with A. Walsh, and al­so earned sil­ver in the 200 breast, while G Walsh picked up an in­di­vid­ual bronze in the 50m fly in what was her ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al de­but.

“I’m ex­cit­ed to be lead­ing Team USA next sum­mer in Paris,” DeS­or­bo said. “I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing with An­tho­ny and the rest of the USA Swim­ming staff to help the ath­letes per­form at the high­est lev­el in Paris.”

Nesty put Bob­by Finke, Kier­an Smith and Jake Mitchell on the men’s team in Fukuo­ka, while Katie Ledecky was the top per­former on the women’s side.

Ledecky won re­peat in­di­vid­ual gold medals in the women’s 800m and 1,500m free while adding a sil­ver in the 400m free, and Finke was the sil­ver medal­list in the men’s 1,500m free (with the third-fastest swim ever) and al­so took bronze in the 800 free.

The 55-year-old Nesty is al­so adding Bel­la Sims, an in­com­ing fresh­man at Flori­da, to his list of Olympic-con­tend­ing ath­letes this sea­son, and he’s al­so ex­pect­ed to land su­per­star Caeleb Dres­sel back on the Olympic team in 2024 af­ter his ex­tend­ed break saw him miss the 2023 Worlds ros­ter.

Nesty al­so coach­es 2021 Olympic sil­ver medal­list Em­ma Weyant, who DeS­or­bo pre­vi­ous­ly coached at UVA be­fore she trans­ferred to Flori­da last year.

“I am gen­uine­ly ho­n­oured and equal­ly hum­bled by this re­cent ap­point­ment,” Nesty said. “I wish to thank Tim Hinchey, CEO (USA Swim­ming) and Lind­say Mintenko, Na­tion­al Team Di­rec­tor (USA Swim­ming), for giv­ing me this pres­ti­gious op­por­tu­ni­ty. I will work dili­gent­ly to make sure our team will be hon­or­ably rep­re­sent­ed at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“I will al­so whole-heart­ed­ly as­sume this role with enor­mous com­mit­ment and en­thu­si­asm. I ea­ger­ly look for­ward to work­ing in uni­son with our ath­letes and the Unit­ed States Swim­ming Staff in the com­ing months. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it will be a plea­sure to again work along­side Todd DeS­or­bo, head US women’s coach. Our goal will be to pas­sion­ate­ly se­cure many out­stand­ing medal per­for­mances on this re­spect­ed and es­teemed world stage. This is the pin­na­cle of the sport and we will ad­vance to­ward our goals with pur­pose­ful pur­suit. Go USA!”

At the Tokyo Olympics, three of Nesty’s cur­rent ath­letes, Dres­sel, Ledecky and Finke, com­bined to win sev­en of the nine in­di­vid­ual gold medals won by the US team, al­though it’s worth not­ing that nei­ther Dres­sel or Ledecky was train­ing un­der Nesty at the time.

“I am thrilled Coach­es DeS­or­bo and Nesty will be join­ing us in Paris and am look­ing for­ward to the ex­pe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship they will bring to the Games,” said Lind­say Mintenko, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the USA swim­ming na­tion­al team.