NASCAR has announced that three Florida Gators Olympians will serve honorary roles at this weekend\u2019s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona.<\/p>\n
The organization announced Wednesday that swimmer Caeleb Dressel will serve as the honorary starter<\/strong><\/a> for the event. On Thursday, NASCAR announced that swimmer Bobby Finke<\/strong> will wave the green flag, while distance runner Parker Valby<\/strong> will be the honorary event official.<\/p>\n All three Olympians competed in the recent Paris Olympic Games.<\/p>\n While not quite as dominant as he was in Tokyo, Dressel was once again a stalwart in the pool in Paris. He claimed gold medals in the 4\u00d7100-meter freestyle relay and the 4\u00d7100-meter mixed medley relay, as well as a silver medal in the 4\u00d7100-meter medley.<\/p>\n Finke nearly ran the same double in Paris as he did in Tokyo, claiming gold in the 1500-meter freestyle and silver in the 800-meter freestyle. He had claimed gold in both events at Tokyo.<\/p>\n Finally, Valbe finished in 11th in the 10,000-meter run after qualifying for her first Olympics.<\/p>\n All three Olympians hail from the University of Florida.<\/p>\n Going into the weekend at Daytona with chances to clinch a playoff spot quickly narrowing, Kevin Harvick<\/strong> has made his pick on a race winner: Bubba Wallace<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It would be the first win for Wallace since 2022, when he took home the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas.<\/p>\n \u201cThey ran well enough at Michigan to be able to put themselves in the conversation,\u201d Harvick explained on the Kevin Harvick\u2019s Happy Hour<\/em><\/a> podcast. \u201cBut I love where he\u2019s at mentally. I just love his space right now and just the things that he\u2019s doing and the way that they\u2019ve come back from the break and performed. And I think Daytona\u2019s a good track for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Wallace finished P26 in the race at Michigan over the weekend, struggling in the FireKeepers Casino 400 after getting collected in a wreck by Kyle Larson<\/strong>.<\/p>\n As things currently stand, Wallace is sitting just one point outside the playoff cut line, trailing Ross Chastain<\/strong> by that narrow a margin. Overcoming it will require some good racing the next couple weeks \u2026 and maybe even a win in front of the Olympians.<\/p>\n The post Olympians Bobby Finke, Parker Valby to serve as honorary officials for Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASCAR has announced that three Florida Gators Olympians will serve honorary roles at this weekend\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67134,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67089\/revisions\/67134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kevin Harvick makes his pick for Daytona<\/h2>\n