Even before the Olympics began, there were moments that seemed custom-built to fly across the internet (Mayor Hidalgo in the Seine! Lady Gaga in feathers! Céline Dion on the Eiffel Tower!)—but now that the Games are well and truly underway, we can expect slightly more athletic accomplishments to stun and amaze us. Here, a running list of highlights at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
July 31:
With her jaw-dropping result in the women’s 1,500-meter freestyle—her 15:30.02 finish set a new Olympic record—Ledecky won her eighth career Olympic gold medal, tying a record set by fellow swimmer Jenny Thomson 20 years ago. No American woman has won more golds in any sport.
A day after Italy’s women’s gymnastics team won silver in the all-around finals—a historic achievement—one of its gymnasts, Giorgia Villa, attracted attention online for quite a different reason. It turns out that back home, Villa was once sponsored by Parmigiano Reggiano…like, the cheese. It’s no wonder that the attending campaign images quickly went viral on X.
July 30:
The squad, led by the indominable Simone Biles, bested Italy and Brazil with a score of 171.296 points—even after Jordan Chiles suffered a fall from the beam at the top of her routine. (Later on, her astonishing Beyoncé-themed floor routine would help to make up for it.) “It was super exciting. We had fun, we enjoyed our time out there, and just did our gymnastics,” Biles said afterward.
Team USA’s gold medal in Paris represents a triumphant return to form since the final in Tokyo, when they took home silver after Biles’s withdrawl partway through the event.
Kim, who won silver in the women’s 10-meter air pistol event on July 28, later went viral on X on the strength of her vibes alone. “The most aura I have ever seen in an image,” one user commented, sharing a picture of Kim clad in her Team South Korea cap, black Fila jacket, and the special glasses worn by all marksmen. “This girl is a movie character like how is she real,” added another, reacting to a video of Kim at the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, earlier this year, where she set a new world record in the women’s 25-meter.
In a touching gesture that only managed to make Kim, a native of Danyang, seem even cooler, in Paris she carried on her person a small stuffed elephant apparently belonging to her daughter.
After being knocked out of the women’s individual sabre competition by South Korea’s Jeon Ha-Young on Monday, during the round of 16, Egyptian fencer Nada Hafez took to Instagram with a frankly shocking revelation: She had been competing in Paris while seven months pregnant. “What appears to you as two players on the podium, they were actually three! It was me, my competitor, & my yet-to-come to our world, little baby!” Hafez wrote. “The rollercoaster of pregnancy is tough on its own, but having to fight to keep the balance of life & sports was nothing short of strenuous, however worth it.” The 2024 Games marked Hafez’s third appearance at the Olympics; she previously competed in Rio and Tokyo.
July 29:
An excellent performance on Monday lifted the men’s team from their fifth-place position (as of Saturday) to the medal podium. The victory was in part due to Stephen Nedoroscik’s heroic performance on the pommel horse—the one and only gymnastics event in which he competed. (He also had to sit through two hours of the competition before his turn—a winning psychic accomplishment as well as a physical one!)
Seventeen-year-old Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh won her first gold medal in the women’s 400-meter individual medley. Her time (4:24.38) was a full three seconds over the record that she set at the Canadian trials in May, but it was more than speedy enough to eliminate her opponents. Mckintosh has already earned a silver medal and has two more events (200-meter medley and butterfly) coming up later this week.
Budinger, who began his professional athletic career as a basketball player, hooping for teams including the Houston Rockets and the Minnesota Timberwolves, shifted his focus to beach volleyball in 2017. Seven years later, making his Olympic debut with playing partner Miles Evans, Budinger celebrated his premier Olympic victory, defeating Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat of France in straight sets.
In the two rivals’ 60th matchup—their first, back in 2006, was also at Stade Roland Garros, during the French Open quarterfinals—Djokovic claimed a decisive victory over Nadal, 6-1, 6-4. But don’t despair too much, Rafa fans: He’s also competing in men’s doubles in Paris, alongside one Carlos Alcaraz. Having beaten Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni of Argentina on Saturday, the pair—known as “Nadalcaraz”—will next take on Tallon Griekspoor and Wesley Koolhof of the Netherlands on Tuesday, July 30.
July 28:
Beating a record set in 2008 by one Michael Phelps, Marchand, 22, finished in 4:02.95, earning him his first Olympic gold medal (and a congratulatory call from French President Emmanuel Macron). “I had goosebumps on the podium. I felt very proud to be myself and to be also French,” Marchand told reporters.
The triumph has a nice, full-circle back story: As a teen, Marchand cold-emailed Bob Bowman, Phelps’s former coach, asking if Bowman would take him on. Bowman wasn’t familiar with Marchand but recognized the last name.
After remarking that she felt a twinge in her left calf during warm-ups on Sunday, Biles returned to the competition floor with her ankle heavily taped. All the same, her subsequent scores of 14.600 on floor (the highest of the day), 15.800 on vault, 14.733 on beam, and 14.433 on uneven bars easily secured her spot in the all-around finals.
In a women’s individual foil final that saw two Americans, Lee Kiefer and Lauren Scruggs, battle for the gold, Kiefer, 30, emerged the victor, becoming the first US woman and only the third woman ever to win two Olympic gold medals in fencing. Scruggs, meanwhile, a 21-year-old Harvard student, became the first Black fencer from Team USA to medal in a women’s individual event at the Olympics.
July 27:
The men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay team, anchored by Caeleb Dressel, claimed gold for the USA on July 27—marking the nation’s first gold medal at the Paris Games. The team, also made up of Jack Alexy, Chris Guiliano, and Hunter Armstrong , posted a combined time of 3:09.28, beating Australia by more than a second. Italy finished third.
Days after the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) suspended Bev Priestman, head coach of Canada’s women’s soccer team, for the remainder of the Games, the team was penalized with a six-point deduction from its group stage total—all but assuring that Canada will not remain in contention for a medal. Why? Because on July 22, it was discovered that a Canadian man with ties to the team “had effectively filmed the closed-door training of the New Zealand women’s team, with the help of a drone,” according to a statement. (Canada would go on to beat New Zealand 2-1 in their match on July 25.)
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A day before South Sudan’s men’s basketball team celebrated its first-ever win at the Olympics—trouncing Puerto Rico 90-79 on July 28—the team went viral on X for their sharp suiting at the opening ceremony, created by Rwandan designer Moses Turahirwa.
Gianmarco Tamberi, a flag bearer for Team Italy, took to Instagram on July 27 with a confession—and an apology—to his wife: The night before, he had watched his wedding ring bounce into the Seine during the opening ceremony. “I’m sorry, my love, I’m so sorry,” the high-jumper wrote in a caption in Italian. “I felt it slip away, I saw it fly.... I followed it with my gaze until I saw it bounce inside the boat. A tinkle of hope... But unfortunately the bounce was in the wrong direction.”
Yet Tamberi managed to give the whole ordeal a romantic spin. He continued, charmingly: “But if it really had to happen […] I couldn’t imagine a better place. It will remain forever in the riverbed of the city of love, flown away while I was trying to raise the Italian tricolor as high as possible during the opening ceremony of the most important sporting event in the world. If I had to invent an excuse I would never have been so imaginative. […] May it be a good omen to return home with an even bigger gold!!!”
The first US medals were won by synchronized divers Kassidy Cook and Sarah Bacon—known as Cook’N Bacon—who nabbed silver in the three-meter springboard final on Saturday, July 27.
Leave it to Paris to fill its utterly iconic Olympic venues with all manner of celebrity onlookers. Among those in the stands on the Olympics’ first weekend were Dr. Jill Biden, Emma Chamberlain, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Spike Lee, Mick Jagger, and Tom Cruise.