The Olympics are back! Well, actually they’re over. But I mean more in the grand scheme of things. The Paris Games were very, very popular, in a way that makes me feel like the Olympics are still going to be a major part of American culture moving forward. After a run of rough time zones and complications from the pandemic, it felt like these Olympics were a return to the feelings we used to expect from 16 days of strength, speed and athleticism on display at the highest levels.
Three years ago, I capped off a much less joyful Olympics with a column on the 10 things I expected we’d remember about the Tokyo Games. They were not necessarily my favorite moments, but the ones that I predicted people will remember many Olympics cycles from now.
Why mess with something that works? If 3x3 basketball, sport climbing and skateboarding can return after the Tokyo Games, then so can this list. Here are my 10 things (or maybe like 25) that I think we’ll remember about Paris 2024.
1. Paris
Let’s start with the host city itself. (We will remember the host city—this column is off to an insightful start.) But I think we will particularly remember how well these Olympics used their surroundings and landmarks. The Games featured some of the most spectacular venues we’ve ever seen, from the fencing and taekwondo in the Grand Palais, to tennis at Roland Garros, to the equestrian and modern pentathlon at Versailles. Then, of course, there’s the Eiffel Tower, where they not only built a beach volleyball stadium, but had running and cycling races finishing right under the structure throughout the Games. Put it this way: I have been following the Olympics for a very long time, and I couldn’t possibly tell you about any other venues for fencing and taekwondo. For Paris, I’ll be able to.
2. The Seine
So, it wasn’t all great for Paris. The opening ceremony was held in boats along the famed river, which was a unique spin on an event that’s typically steeped in tradition. It was interesting, and memorable, but not the end of the story. The idea to put swimmers in the Seine deserves points for ambition, but the saga over whether the river was safe enough lingered over five events (three triathlons: men’s, women’s and mixed team; plus the men’s and women’s open-water swims). There were rescheduled events and canceled training swims. One Dutch triathlete said, “Swimming in the Seine was disgusting.” Another “felt and saw things that we shouldn’t think about.”
I also found it baffling that the IOC had no satisfying backup plan in case the triathlon would have had to be scrapped. They would have simply turned the event into a duathlon (running and cycling) instead of finding another triathlon course literally anywhere in France.
Even putting aside concerns about E. coli, the strong current in the river had a massive impact on the open-water races, as our Pat Forde wrote.
Anyway … sure was memorable.
3. Léon Marchand
Sometimes a few Olympics can blur together—was that in Sydney or Athens?—but it’ll be easy to remember France’s Léon Marchand swimming in front of his home fans in 2024. The atmosphere the night he set an Olympic record in the 400-meter IM was so raucous you could feel your living room shaking through the TV. It was truly special to see the combination of talent and timing come together to create a moment like that. And then he only built on his legacy three nights later by completing a historic double (golds in the 200 butterfly and 200 breaststroke finals on the same day), then capped it with a gold in the 200 IM.
It was a great showing overall for the host country, which finished fifth in golds (16) and fourth in total medals (64). I’ll remember Teddy Riner closing out his legendary Olympic judo career with golds in the individual and team competition, and the way the spirited fans added to the scene in a handful of other sports.
4. Simone Biles
This was the final act of a dramatic three-part play that were Biles’s Rio, Tokyo and Paris Olympics. She was already the absolute greatest ever in her sport, to the point that Olympic medals shouldn’t have really mattered much to her legacy. But after everything she dealt with in Tokyo—the twisties, pulling out of events, an unfathomable amount of public scrutiny—it was inspiring to see her return to the stage at age 27 to win not just the team gold in gymnastics but also another individual all-around title (plus gold on vault and silver on floor).
She now has 11 Olympic medals: seven gold, two silver and two bronze. But it’s not just the numbers. Sports fans love stats and accolades, but love good stories even more. To see her return to the top of her sport was inspiring and will make Paris stand out when we look back on her Olympic résumé.
Gymnastics bonus: Stephen Nedoroscik! You never know what moment is going to pop, and the American pommel horse specialist in the glasses becoming an Olympic legend was not in my preview notes. But watching him nail the routine on the final rotation to give the U.S. a bronze medal in the team event felt like a movie. And then to see him earn an individual medal on the apparatus he owns after the spotlight of fame had been turned on him was also cool. Years from now you will see a pommel horse and think of Nedoroscik.
Bonus bonus: Let’s see how long this Jordan Chiles situation plays out for and how messy it gets.
5. Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson
There were so many unforgettable moments in track and field that I almost feel bad narrowing it down, but I just can’t write multiple paragraphs about all of them. So I’m picking the two moments that I think will stand out when we have the benefit of more hindsight.
The men’s 100 meters was one of the most bonkers sporting events of the year. The race was settled by five thousandths of a second, as in three decimal places. The announcer totally botched the call, leading to a dramatic and confusing moment while everyone waited to see who won and then found out, Oh, it’s the super famous guy we spent months hearing about leading up to the Olympics. And then a few days later, he won a bronze medal in his better event, the 200 meters, and shortly after he crossed the finish line we found out he was racing with COVID-19. Again, you wouldn’t have believed the script.
And then Sha’Carri Richardson, whose story became so familiar when she was unable to run in Tokyo, gave us that indelible image, turning her head to glare at her opponent before turning on the jets to claim her first Olympic gold as the anchor leg in the women’s 4x100 relay. Pictures are worth a thousand words and memes are the new history books. We will remember Richardson’s moment any time someone searches for the right image to convey that it’s time to get serious.
Again, no offense to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabby Thomas, Quincy Hall, Cole Hocker, Rai Benjamin, Grant Holloway, Julian Alfred, Femke Bol and all the other runners who supplied moments of brilliance. But these races involving Lyles and Richardson are the kind that will stick with everyday sports fans who only dip into track and field every four years.
Track and field bonus: Mondo! There were several Tokyo gold medalists who defended their crowns on the infield, but Mondo Duplantis owned that night on the infield when he broke his own world record in the pole vault.
6. Katie Ledecky
Ledecky has now won so many medals (including four consecutive 800-meter freestyle golds), that her Olympics may blur together. But the Paris Games were the ones in which she became the most decorated female American Olympian of all time, a feat that highlights both her dominance and her longevity.
Ledecky medaled in the same four events she did in Tokyo, and is now up to 14 Olympic medals total. Michael Phelps is the only American with more and the only swimmer with more. Ledecky’s nine gold medals are tied for second all-time, and Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina is the only other woman on the list. Other Americans with nine are Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis and Caeleb Dressel (who earned his eighth and ninth on relay teams in Paris). And remember that Ledecky would surely have more if the women’s 1,500-meter free, the event in which she now owns the 20 fastest times in history, had been part of the Olympic program before 2020.
Ledecky won more gold medals in Rio, but Paris was where she bolstered her case as not just a swimming legend but an all-time Olympic great.
7. Breaking
While I would love to devote this space to my beloved kayak cross, another new event in these Games (and by all accounts a breakout hit), we must talk about breaking. Breaking will not be an event in the L.A. Olympics four years from now, and everyone seems resigned to the belief that it will be one-and-done. Which means this will forever go down as a historical oddity, a one-time did-this-really-happen? thing that we all saw and lived through.
I don’t intend to be mean here. As I said on my podcast, SI’s Daily Rings: I thought the athletes were impressive and athletic. I thought the sport was entertaining. I did not think it was the end of the Olympics as we know it, or some horrible travesty, as others have contended in the years since we found out this would happen. It just didn’t strike me as an Olympic sport. But for two fascinating days in Paris, it was. And we’ll remember Snoop Dogg blessing the proceedings, Raygun, Phil Wizard, the other B-Girls and B-Boys, the set design and everything that came along with it.
8. Gold Zone
I wrote a longer column earlier this week about Gold Zone, NBC’s NFL RedZone–style whip-around show that took viewers around Paris for 10 hours every day. I won’t repeat myself too much here, except to say that the show matched my sensibilities exactly, with its blend of major sports, high-interest moments and check-ins with niche events. Gold Zone is not actually new, but for a variety of reasons this was the Olympics in which NBC perfected it. It’ll be hard to ever go back. Based on the feedback I got from that column, I think a lot of viewers will remember it as a major part of their Paris experience.
NBC bonus: Colin Jost covering the surfing in Tahiti. To be clear, this is about much more than one man doing silly videos with an ear infection. He is merely one face of NBC’s larger celebritization of the Olympics. Mike Tirico hosted the opening ceremony with Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson, then hosted the closing ceremony with Jimmy Fallon. In between, NBC gave us Snoop Dogg … everywhere (including not just dapping up athletes but giving actual reports on the men’s basketball team’s rotations). The Games had so many celebrities at so many events, that it was hard to keep track of how many cutaways to celebrities in the crowds featured people on NBC’s payroll. The idea of having the surfing take place about 10,000 miles away from the Olympic Village was surprising enough that the thought of sending a comedian to cover it felt routine. But that will be a quirky little thing that I predict will outlast the memory of who won a bunch of the 329 gold medals.
9. Spiff
If you measure Olympic moments by how loudly I yelled at my television when they happened, I don’t think anything from Paris surpassed the walk-off try from Alex “Spiff” Sedrick that gave the U.S. women’s rugby sevens team a bronze medal. It was the rugby equivalent of a 90-yard punt return after the final horn sounded. And it happened at the end of a very tense game, which happened to be the second game of the day and the third straight day of doubleheaders.
The rugby sevens tournament is quick and fun. Fans have taken a liking to it since it became an Olympic sport in 2016, but the U.S. had not really had a signature moment, nor a medal to show for its efforts. Now the U.S. has a bronze medal, and it’ll be fun to see how much that helps generate interest in the sport.
10. USA Basketball
I’m never quite sure how much attention to pay basketball in the lead-up to the Olympics. I usually prefer to devote my attention to sports such as swimming, track and field, and gymnastics, which get a significantly bigger spotlight every four years than they otherwise receive. But basketball seems to garner an outsized share of attention just because, well, everyone loves basketball and the players are so famous. So we scrutinize roster decisions and watch tune-up games and repost little moments when other Olympians geek out about meeting the players at the opening ceremony.
Then they start playing basketball and it’s easy to remember why people obsess over these teams of athletes that so many sports fans already watch on a regular basis.
We were given a few classics to end this year’s Olympics. The U.S. men had an outstanding semifinal against Serbia and an intense final against France. Both games required comebacks and featured some of the most famous players of their generation (LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant) reminding us why they are all-time greats.
As an encore, a U.S. women’s team that usually bulldozes its way to the top of the medal podium had to survive a nail-biter of an ending against France in a game that was entertaining until literally the final buzzer. A’ja Wilson & Co. fell behind early in the third quarter before wrestling back control to finish off the team’s eighth straight gold medal. Throw in the unique circumstances that both finals featured a favored U.S. team playing essentially a road game against France, and the conclusions of both tournaments were a treat.
11. And everything else.
There was so much else! A Turkish shooter became an icon and a skeet shooting final ended on a horrible replay review controversy. The France-Germany men’s handball quarterfinal briefly felt like it was the Super Bowl and nothing else mattered. A surfer levitated and they used a computerized spinning wheel to decide Game 7 in team judo.
There was the day both Scottie Scheffler and Novak Djokovic, two guys who’ve won everything, broke down over winning gold medals. There was Trinity Rodman, Mallory Swanson and the rest of the USWNT. There was Lauren Scruggs losing to teammate Lee Kiefer in the individual foil finals, but then scoring the final touch when they won gold together in the team event.
Cuban wrestler Mijaín López became the first athlete ever to win the same individual event in five straight Olympics. A Swedish discus thrower was trying to become the first repeat Olympic champ in 20 years, and at one point was throwing against the son of the last guy to do it.
Kristen Faulkner, the track cyclist from Alaska, messed around and won the road race as a late replacement. Sifan Hassan, the runner who medaled in the 5,000 and 10,000, messed around and won the marathon.
There was Lisa Carrington and Ryan Crouser and Amit Elor and Lydia Ko and Félix Lebrun and the list goes on.
So, so much happens as the days stretch on, but then you blink and we’re onto the next one. The good news is Paris left us with a lot worth remembering.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The 10 Things We’ll Remember About Paris 2024.
