Post by Uncle on Jul 22, 2024 8:15:27 GMT -6
The 2024 Summer Olympics start on Wednesday, 7/24 in Paris and run through Sunday, 8/11. Here are some facts about this year's games:
- We will see over 10,500 athletes from 206 countries, with an equal number of male and female participants, according to the IOC. They will compete in 45 different sports, with 41 considered traditional Olympic events.
- The 2024 Paris Olympic Games will introduce breaking, also known as breakdancing, as a new sport...the Olympic Games are slowly morphing into the Summer X Games:
- While the Games officially begin on Wed, 7/24 (with the USA Men's soccer team taking on host France at 3PM ET), the Opening Ceremony will take place on Saturday, 7/26, along the Seine River. I have no idea of the logistics of that as the Opening/Closing Ceremonies traditionally take place in a Olympic Stadium with 70-80K+ fans in attendance as they parade out all the countries that are competing, but I'm assuming it will look something like this with fans lining the river on bleachers while large barges will carry each nation and their athletes:
- Remember, the Games are being held in Paris which is 6 hrs ahead of those on ET, and 7 hrs ahead for those in the Twin Cities / CT time zone. If you want to watch the Games live on the NBC family of networks, you'll need to watch during the day. The "primetime" events in Paris will air live in the mid-to-late afternoon in the US and the replays will be in primetime (tape delay), but you'll already know the results if you read online sports media during the day.
- ESPN has a nice article on 30 US Olympians to watch during the games to get caught up - link.
- The US will have the most athletes (592), followed by the host country France (573), Austraila (460), Germany (428) and Italy (403). The countries with the least amount of participating athletes - with only 1 - are Belize, Liechtenstein, Nauru and Somalia. For reference, the US sent 615 athletes to Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games
- The US was the medal count winner at the previous Summer Olympic games in Tokyo 2020 with 113 total, as well as having the most gold medals (39). China, Japan, Great Britian and ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) were next countries in the Top 5 medal count. With the US having 615 athletes in Tokyo, that means that 1 in every 5.4 US athletes won a medal.
Go Team USA!