Olympic Medalist Kevin McDowell Honored With Geneva Street Sign

GENEVA, IL — A special part of Geneva's rich history, Olympic triathlon athlete Kevin McDowell now has a dedicated street sign in his hometown. The silver medalist tuned in to the Geneva City Council Meeting Monday from Colorado Springs via video conference and accepted the honor.

The sign, announcing Geneva as the home of Kevin McDowell, will be displayed in a "prominent location," Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns said at the meeting after jokingly asking the athlete if he'd prefer the sign to face the road entering Geneva from either St. Charles or Batavia.

"Oh, wow," McDowell said when he saw the sign. "That's awesome. That's incredible."

The 29-year-old made his country and Geneva proud on July 31 when he won his first Olympic medal, just six days after he placed sixth in the men's individual triathlon event during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The historic finish went beyond McDowell's personal medal, as he also became one of the first American men to win an Olympic medal in the triathlon.

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He started his 2020 Olympic qualification campaign exactly 10 years after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

"After six months of intensive chemotherapy, cancer was removed, but the physical recovery process was only just beginning," Burns said at the meeting. "Determined to return to triathlon as quickly as possible, Kevin realized in 2013 he needed to take a major step back, returning fully in 2014 to resume what he had begun."

During the City Council meeting, the athlete talked about the history of the triathlon and how it ended up in the Olympics. He also reminisced on his childhood in Geneva — "a phenomenal place where I was raised and grown up," he said — and his very first triathlon, right on his home turf.

"When I was 10 ... I swam on the Geneva River Rats, ran around the neighborhood and did a lot of different stuff and would do the local running races and then learned about this triathlon [Multisport Madness], so I joined that," he said.

McDowell said he played "all sports" growing up, but "by the time I was 12, I stopped everything and just did triathlon. That's what I wanted to do and was fully committed to that. I had to beg my parents in the beginning days to let me go all in like I did."

The Olympic silver medalist will be returning to his hometown in February when he'll be inducted into the Geneva High School Athletic Hall of Fame, the mayor shared at the meeting.

"I'm very excited about all that," he said. "It'll be a good weekend, actually, a great weekend."