The Paris 2024 Olympics kick off on Wednesday before Friday’s opening ceremony. Find out everything about medal table predictions, venues and expected broken records.
The Paris 2024 Olympics kick off this Wednesday with the first football and rugby sevens games ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday at 7:30 pm CET.
The games will run until 11 August, but the hype is already huge. This edition has sold more tickets (8.6 million) than any previous summer Olympics, organisers said in July, overtaking Atlanta 1996’s 8.3 million.
More than 1 million tickets have already been sold for the Paralympics as well.
The 33rd edition of the games is held across 35 venues, mainly in Paris but also in other French cities like Lille, Marseille, Lyon, Nice, and the Pacific island of Tahiti.
Paris 2024 will have a strong urban focus, with several competitions held at iconic places like the Champs-Élysées, the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, Invalides, and Pont Alexandre — with the aim of keeping athletes and citizens as close as possible.
Paris has been spruced up with a monumental operation to clean the Seine, and many venues have been renovated to avoid erecting new buildings, as Paris 2024 aims to reduce the carbon footprint by 50% compared to the previous games.
US most represented nation, Russians and Belarusians in neutral team
A total of 206 teams are participating, featuring 10,500 athletes.
The US is the most represented country with 592 athletes, followed by France (573), Australia (460), Germany (427), Japan (404), China (388), Spain (382), Italy (361) and Great Britain (327). The smallest delegations — with only one athlete each — are Belize, Lesotho, Malawi, Malta, Montserrat and Nauru.
There is also going to be a Refugee Team, the largest ever at the Olympics, with 35 athletes, mostly coming from Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.
Russia and Belarus are banned because of Moscow’s full-scale invasion and the ongoing war in Ukraine, but their athletes are not — and will compete with the Individual Neutral team.
Predictions: US and China likely to dominate medal table again
According to the Gracenote-Nielsen forecast, the US is expected to win the most medals at Paris 2024 (123), improving their result from Tokyo 2020 (113).
If Team US fulfils the expectations, it will be the eighth consecutive time it has placed at the top of the Summer Games table.
China is predicted to finish second again, with 87 medals, two less than it did at Tokyo 2020. Great Britain, also known as Team GB, is expected to finish third, followed by France, although the hosts are expected to snatch more gold medals.
The US is the all-time top medal winner at the Summer Games (2,981), followed by the USSR (1,204), Great Britain (948), Germany (892) and France (835).
Individual and team records there for the taking
On 10 August, Team US and NBA star Kevin Durant might have the chance to become the first male athlete to win four gold medals in any team sport if the US scoops a fifth consecutive gold medal.
The record, however, could be levelled the following day in case France triumphs in men’s handball, as Nikola Karabatić would win his fourth Olympic gold following Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Tokyo 2020. The player is set to retire after these Summer Games.
On the women’s front, German equestrian Isabell Werth and American swimmer Kate Ledecky have an opportunity to make history by winning the most Olympic gold medals in any sport. The current women’s record is held by Soviet-Ukrainian gymnast Larisa Latynina, who was awarded nine gold medals during her career.
Georgian shooter Niko Salukvadze could extend her record of competing in most Olympic Games, as Paris 2024 will mark her 10th participation. Her first appearance dates all the way back to Seoul 1988.
The current all-time record — for both men and women — belongs to Canadian equestrian show jumper Ian Millar.** He competed in 10 Olympic Games from 1972 to 2012, missing only the 1980 Moscow Olympics due to the Canadian boycott.
In team sports, Team US could break other records with its 3×3 and 5×5 female basketball squads.
If they win a gold medal at Bercy Arena on 11 August, it would be their eighth consecutive one since Atlanta 1986, thus breaking the record for the most consecutive Olympic gold medals in any team sport.
The current record is tied with their male US counterparts, who won seven golds from Berlin 36 to Rome 68.
Opening day schedule: Games kick off with football and rugby
The actual competitions in Paris 2024 begin on Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony.
Football and rugby sevens open the competitions. Here is the schedule for the first day:
Football, group stage
- Argentina-Morocco (3 pm CET, Saint-Étienne)
- Uzbekistan-Spain (3 pm CET, Paris)
- Guinea-New Zealand (5 pm CET, Nice)
- Egypt-Dominican Republic (5 pm CET, Nantes)
- Iraq-Ukraine (7 pm CET, Lyon)
- Japan-Paraguay (7 pm CET, Bordeaux)
- France-US (9 pm CET, Marseille)
- Mali-Israel (9 pm CET, Paris)
Rugby sevens, men’s pool
- Australia-Samoa (3:30 pm CET, Paris)
- Argentina-Kenya (4 pm CET, Paris)
- France-US (4:30 pm CET, Paris)
- Fiji-Uruguay (5 pm CET, Paris)
- Ireland-South Africa (5:30 pm CET, Paris)
- New Zealand-Japan (6 pm CET, Paris)
- Australia-Kenya (7 pm CET, Paris)
- Argentina-Samoa (7:30 pm CET, Paris)
- France-Uruguay (8 pm CET, Paris)
- Fiji-US (8:30 pm CET, Paris)
The newest disciplines: Breakdance, skateboarding and surfing
The latest editions of the Olympic Games saw the introduction of new sports with the aim to involve more communities and younger generations.
Breakdancing will be the latest sport to debut in Paris, while other disciplines like skateboarding, sport climbing, BMX freestyle, and surfing were introduced in Tokyo in 2020.
Surfing is the only discipline hosted outside mainland France, in the overseas territory of Tahiti. Competitions will occur at Teahupo’o, renowned for its large and powerful waves.
In total, 32 sports will feature at Paris 2024, encompassing 48 disciplines.
