South Dakota State swimmer Denilson Cyprianos is officially Paris-bound.

The Jackrabbit senior-to-be will represent his native Zimbabwe in the 2024 Summer Olympics, which begin Friday. After some slight travel delays, Cyprianos was scheduled to arrive in Paris Monday and plans to take part in Friday’s Opening Ceremonies.

“I’ve seen a lot of opening ceremonies for all the different games and each one has its own special and unique (feature), something to bring to the table,” Cyprianos said. “But this time, for the pinnacle of sports, I’m curious to see how much has gone into that one.”

Cyprianos, who grew up in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city of Bulawayo, will be part of a contingent of only seven athletes from a country of 16 million people located in southeastern Africa. The rest of the contingent consists of a female swimmer, three track and field competitors, a marathon runner and a rower.

As far as competition, Cyprianos will swim exclusively in the 200-meter backstroke. Preliminary heats are scheduled to begin around 11 a.m. Paris-time (4 a.m. Central Time) on July 31, with the semifinals that evening. The finals are set for Aug. 1. Preliminary rounds will be available for viewing through the Peacock streaming platform, with coverage of the semifinals and finals on NBC.

Cyprianos is the first active South Dakota State student-athlete to compete in the Olympics. Distance running standout and current SDSU director of track and field Rod DeHaven was the United States representative in the men’s marathon at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, nearly a decade after he concluded his decorated collegiate career.

Cyprianos put himself in position to earn his place in Paris by winning the 200-meter backstroke at the 13th African Games in Accra, Ghana, in March, setting a new personal best in the event with a winning time of 2 minutes, 1.96 seconds and edging Abdella Ardjoune of Algeria by .06 seconds.

Although Cyrprianos was confident he would be heading to the Olympics based on his status as the high-point leader from Zimbabwe during recent international competitions, his selection did not become official until just a couple weeks ago. In the meantime, he continued to train in Brookings and also competed at the Bahamian Championship in late June as a tuneup to Paris.

“It was relieving to get the announcement that I was going just because all the preparation you’ve been doing has been for something and it’s not going to go to waste,” Cyprianos said. “Now that the time’s here I’m fixing up those finer details just to best prepared to surprise them in Paris.”

His performances at the African Games concluded a month full of high-profile competition both on the international level and collegiately. Cyprianos began his stretch by competing in mid-February at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar, where he placed 26th in the 200 back prelims (2:04.70) and 34th in the 100 backstroke (:56.82)

A few days later, Cyprianos was back with the Jackrabbits for the Summit League Swimming and Diving Championships in Minneapolis, Over a three-day period, he swam to berths in the finals of three events, finishing as runner-up in the 200-yard backstroke (1:45.64) along with posting sixth-place showings in the 200 freestyle (1:39.07) and 500 freestyle (4:31.06).

Cyrprianos previously set the school record in the 200-yard backstroke at the 2023 Summit League Championships with a mark of 1:44.03 and also holds the Jackrabbits’ second-fastest time in the 500 freestyle (4:31.06) and third-fastest marks in the 1,650 freestyle (15:51.02) and 100 backstroke (:49.24).

“We’ve been very successful, so we’ve just followed the path that we’ve always done with him,” said SDSU head coach Doug Humphrey. “He’s continued to grow and get better each and every year. We’re excited that he’s got one year left and we’re going to take the momentum from the Olympics and just keep him going through.”

The Olympics, however, are a completely different stage and Cyprianos knows he will have to put together the performance of a lifetime in order to advance out of the prelims. He estimates he will have to cut about four to five seconds off his current best time.

“I’m not counting it as impossible,” Cyprianos said. “I have faith in myself and in what the coaches and I have done here that I will surprise myself and surprise the world when I get there.”

With a singular event to focus on, Cyprianos is keeping his Olympic strategy simple.

“Play to your strengths,” he said. “Sometimes you get lost in these big competitions with the adrenaline and the nerves. I just have to stick to the gameplan the coaches and I have made. If that works out, it could be a really good swim in Paris.”

Adding to the excitement of competing in the Olympics is the support Cyprianos said he will receive. Numerous family members, coaches, friends and even a couple of current Jackrabbit teammates plan to travel to Paris to see him compete.

“It’s been really cool. Hearing from other people makes you realize how far you’ve because sometimes you get caught up in each next practice and you forget to look back on how far you’ve come,” he said. “But my time to look back isn’t now. I still have to go and compete in Paris so I haven’t gotten too lost in that, I’m just trying to stay focused on that one race, just two minutes of my life that has to be as perfect as possible.”

Humphrey, who will join Cyprianos in Paris early next week, said his star student has made the most of his athletic abilities, but it may be his graciousness and maturity that rank as his best qualities.

“It’s extremely overwhelming with pride seeing someone achieve at that level,” said Humphrey. “I’m looking forward to watch it all happen and see him really flourish in this environment. He’s been training very hard for this and looks better than he ever has so we’re expecting some good performances out there.”

A moment decades in the making for Cyprianos will be bittersweet, however, as he carries the memory of his late father, Edmore, with him.

“It was always my dad’s goal from a young age to see me go to the Olympics,” said Cyprianos, who has been swimming competitively since the age of 7 and was coached by his father during his teenage years. “It is hard, but swimming as a whole keeps me close to my dad.

“We didn’t really have too much analytical work behind our practices,” he added. “It was just kind of cold-hard work really, not much science, not much thought into practices so it’s really cool to have come this far from just that little dream we had.”

The elder Cyprianos passed away a month before Denilson, the youngest of three boys, came to the United States to start college. He spent his first year swimming and studying at Carson-Newman University, an NCAA Division II school in Tennessee, before finding a home at South Dakota State in the fall of 2021, where he is majoring in operations management with a minor in engineering management.

“My mom, luckily, was with me at the African Games and it was a very emotional moment for us just because these were the things that we would always work for and now they’re coming to fruition. It’s beautiful, but it’s sad at the same time.”

Although he is focused on Paris 2024, Cyprianos has allowed himself to take a peek ahead four years to when the Olympics will be held in Los Angeles.

“It’s definitely a huge possibility,” he said. “A lot of swimming, in the sport that we do, you have to give it a lot of time, a lot of effort just to make those little progressions. To go all the way to win now in Paris would be a far, far stretch, but 2028, given four more years of preparation and I’ll be a little older and a little stronger, that could be a whole different thing. Obviously, life and different circumstances will judge that one, but it’s definitely on the table.”

Until then, Cyprianos and his coaches plan to make the most of his first Olympic experience and his final season of collegiate competition.
“I’m just happy to represent the Jackrabbits in Paris and it’s been a good ride here,” Cyprianos said. “It’s coming to an end slowly but I’m just glad that I can take it this far.”