Cardinal gold.
They may be the fittest athletes on Earth, but Stanford Olympians just got a little heavier thanks to a school-record 39 gold, silver, and bronze medals—the most by any school at one Olympics. If Stanford was a country, its medal count would have tied with Canada for 11th place. The Card’s 12 gold medals came courtesy of fencer Vivian Kong, ’16; discus thrower Valarie Allman, ’17; soccer players Tierna Davidson, ’20, Naomi Girma, ’22, and Sophia Smith, ’22; and a fierce pool of swimmers: Katie Ledecky, ’20, and Regan Smith, ’25 (two apiece), and Torri Huske, ’25 (three!). Ledecky’s Paris medals brings her all-time Olympic total to 14, making her the most decorated U.S. female Olympian and the second-most-decorated American after Michael Phelps. She’ll have to double her count to surpass his 28 medals, but the Loop isn’t worried. “I don’t feel like I’m close to being finished in the sport yet,” she told reporters after winning the 1,500-meter freestyle, an event in which she’s clocked the 20 fastest times in history.
Outside the pool, gymnasts Asher Hong, ’26, and Brody Malone, ’22, helped the United States bring home its first team medal since 2008—a bronze—making them two of just three Olympic medalists in Stanford men’s gymnastics program history. Also on dry land, Grant Fisher, ’19, MS ’23, earned a bronze medal in the men’s 10,000 meters, one of just four Americans ever to medal in the event. “This is what everyone dreams about,” he said afterward. Then he nabbed a second bronze, in the 5,000-meters.
For anyone who can’t get enough of Stanford athletes (and really, who can?), check out the Paralympic Games. You’ll see Jeff Butler, MBA ’23, a member of Team USA’s men’s wheelchair rugby team, and Skyler Espinoza, MA ’18, a para-cycling tandem pilot.
Skinspiration.
Sun protection is important for people of all skin shades, but dermatologists in the U.S. are overwhelmingly white, and they’re primarily trained to treat white skin. “Even though they may be less likely to get skin cancer, Black and Hispanic patients are also much more likely to be diagnosed late, and to die from that cancer,” says Leandra Barnes, MD ’19, a dermatologist with Stanford Medicine. When she was growing up, none of Barnes’s health-care providers encouraged her to think about the risk of skin cancer, nor were they familiar with some dermatological conditions that more often affect Black patients, such as hidradenitis suppurativa, a painful inflammatory skin condition. Barnes is launching the Skin of Color program at Stanford, which is designed to teach doctors to recognize the skin conditions of those with darker skin and to advance research on under-investigated ones. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of conditions in dermatology where there's a stigma involved,” Barnes told Stanford’s Scope blog. “I just love being the one in the room who can say, ‘This is not your fault. There are things we can do, so let’s work together to address this.’”
Pigeon patrol.
Photo: Liam Stimpson
When there’s something strange lurking in your HVAC system, who ya gonna call? Austin Isgitt, abatement falconer. If you’ve seen Isgitt and his Harris’s hawk Diego on campus, they were likely on the hunt (Watch him go!) for the enemy of HVAC systems everywhere: pigeons. This spring, the birds were discovered nesting on the roof of Stanford Hospital—and they had begun to compromise the cold-water chillers that help regulate the air quality and temperature inside the building. Twice a week, Isgitt visits campus with Diego, whose mere presence is usually sufficient to scare away the pigeons and keep the roof free of bird-borne biohazards.
A crowning achievement.
Alma Cooper says her Stanford experience helped prepare her to fulfill a lifelong dream: being crowned Miss USA, which she was on August 4. An Army officer who graduated from West Point with a degree in mathematical science and research on body mass index and its relationship to Army recruiting difficulties. Cooper brought her interest in diet and food insecurity to Stanford’s statistics program as a Knight-Hennessy scholar . “The greatest things in life lie on the other side of fear,” she said. “When you demand excellence of yourself, even in the face of fear, there are so many beautiful things that lie behind that door.”
But wait, there’s more.
Not all broken records are cool. Rafael Pelayo, a sleep expert and clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, weighs in on the best ways to get sleep during historic heat waves, including aiming a small fan directly at your face; taking a cool bath an hour before bedtime; and ditching PJs for your birthday suit. More concerned about getting kids up for the first day of school? Pelayo says it is possible to become a morning person.
Speaking of record heat, in 2007, when Mark Michaels, MBA ’87, bought United Record P ressing—the oldest vinyl record pressing plant in the world—vinyl was at its low point. Thanks to a comeback that began in 2020, Michaels is now pressing 40,000 records a day.
Stephanie Kwok, ’08, has been named the NFL’s first vice president of flag football, a rapidly growing sport that will make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028.
A new study by Stanford Medicine shows that current pediatric heart transplant waitlists aren’t doing a good job of factoring in medical urgency. Instead, improvements in outcomes over the past several decades have been due mostly to improvements in medical care.
Tilly Griffiths, ’22, MA ’24, was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at age 1 and was adamant in childhood that her future job have nothing to do with disability. But at Stanford, she decided the path she avoided might be a perfect fit, and recently graduated from the master’s in journalism program. “Writing was a form of advocacy for me,” she says.
Sure, sure, you may regularly complete the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, but if you can’t complete this new study (created by siblings and computer science graduate students Parker Ruth, MS ’24, and Kimberly Ruth, MS ’23), can you even call yourself Cardinal?
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