By Kelly deVos | March 19, 2026
Imagine it: the roar of the crowd flattening into white noise, the medal cool and improbably heavy against your chest, and a flag rising above your eyeline. When Mikael Örn is asked whether the real experience lives up to the movie version — whether standing on that Olympic podium in Los Angeles in 1984 felt as cinematic as people imagine — he doesn’t undercut the fantasy.
“It was like that,” he says, with a smile. “It was unbelievable.”
Örn is an alumnus of the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. His bronze medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay is only the beginning of a story that continues decades later: Olympian. Engineer. IBM executive. Aquatics entrepreneur.
In 2028, Örn will return to Los Angeles for the Olympic Games not as a swimmer, but to help engineer the water conditions for competition on the world stage.
“It’s full circle for me,” he says. “I get to go back to the Los Angeles Olympics for a second time, and now I get to go back and deliver the equipment.”