By Amira Castilla | The Root
South Carolina natives Jasmine Camacho-Quinn and Robert Quinn are the ultimate sibling goals with one being an Olympic gold medalist and the other hoping to add a Super Bowl win to his resume.
Running track is in Jasmine Camacho- Quinn’s veins as both of her parents, María Milagros Camacho and James Quinn were track and field stars at Charleston Southern University. However, their daughter took her talent to the next level.
In 2021, Jasmine represented Puerto Rico, her mother’s home country, at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo (held in 2021 due to Covid), walking or rather sprinting away with the coveted gold medal in the 100m hurdle race. This achievement was a breakthrough moment for Quinn as five years earlier at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics she was disqualified from the 100m hurdles semi-final due to hitting two hurdles.
In an interview with Olympics.com , she spoke out about the nerves leading up to her Tokyo run saying, “Going into the Tokyo Olympics, I didn’t want that same thing happening. It was stressful for me just because I didn’t want to hit another hurdle. Even before my semis race in Tokyo, I just broke down crying because I was scared.”
As Jasmine was taking the track world by storm, her older brother was in the NFL as a Defensive end. Robert Quinn was drafted by the St. Louis Rams as the 14th pick in the first round of the 2011 NFL draft. He spent five seasons with the Rams and has since been traded to the Los Angeles Rams, Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys, Chicago Bears, and in 2022 the Philadelphia Eagles. In 2021 Quinn had 18.5 sacks the second-highest number of sacks in the NFL.
Robert was drafted to the Eagles in October 2022 but was unfortunately put on injury reserve in order to get arthroscopic knee surgery. The football veteran missed four games in that period but rejoined the team on the field on January 7, 2023, in time to complete the regular season. Now, he’s headed to this year’s Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Not only will Robert be representing his sporty family, but he’ll also be competing to be the top representative of his former high school Fort Dorchester in South Carolina. He will be playing against former high school classmate, Carlos Dunlap of the Kansas City Chiefs. According to South Carolina’s WCSC, the two come back to the school to host a kid’s football and cheerleading camp during their NFL offseason.
We will have to wait and see if Jasmine returns for the next Olympic games in a couple of years, but for now, she is cheering on her big brother. Jasmine shared her excitement in a tweet on January 29, 2023, writing, “My parents witness me in Olympics & now my brother in the Super Bowl in a couple weeks! LFG !!!” Amazing genes, right? Congratulations to the Quinn family!
The Inland Valley News coverage of local news in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties is supported by the Ethnic Media Sustainability Initiative, a program created by California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services to support minority-owned-and-operated community newspapers across California.
