The most famous athlete to come from Malmo, Sweden, might be football star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but the town can also boast the 2024 Olympic diver Emilia Nilsson Garip as one of its own.

On Friday in Paris, Nilsson Garip, 21, placed ninth in the women’s 3m springboard final in her first Olympics. She hopes it’s not her last.

Her coach Paer Berg was with her on the pool deck, and in 2022-23, they benefitted from the World Aquatics scholarship program, which provides financial and technical resources to athletes who demonstrate strong international results but may need assistance to progress further.

Nilsson Garip has been on an upward trajectory since then. She quickly improved from 47th place in the women’s 3m event in her world championship debut, in 2019, to 11th place three years later in Budapest. She then finished eighth at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, toward the end of her scholarship season.

Already, in 2024, before the Games, she earned a bronze medal on the (non-Olympic) 1m event at the 2024 European Aquatic Championships then had to withdraw from the 3m event due to injury after her feet hit the board during the competition.

She also competed for the University of Utah this year, where she became the school’s first diver in its history to win the 1m and 3m events at the Pac-12 conference championship meet. She will return to Salt Lake City after the Games to begin her second year studying communication and marketing there.

Meanwhile, in Paris, she confessed that being her nation’s lone Olympic diver was “amazing, but it will be funner or better if someone else is here. Then again, I also had my family – mom, dad, and older sister – in the stands, and I could go out to lunch and dinner with them. So I had a great time.”

“I want to continue and compete at next Olympics,” she said. “I'm in college until then, so it will be fun to just go for it.”

As for her ninth-place result in Paris, she said, “I am very happy about it, but I knew that I could do better. I just needed some energy, you know, and some excitement, but I'm really very happy about my dives.”

If she could have changed one thing, she said she would have been more confident. She also had her back taped in two places, explaining that “I got a back injury just today during practice but I managed to just put it aside. I  made it to the final. It's pretty good.”

For now, it’s time to enjoy the last bits of summer.

“I'm actually going back home tomorrow, [Saturday, a day] before the Closing Ceremony.

“I go back to school at the 19th August.”