By Noa Tilley
The 2024 Paris Olympics have begun!
The 2024 Paris Olympics runs from July 26th to August 11th. The Olympics are available to watch on Peacock and NBC. There are a total of 32 sports this year. The USA has competed in 16 events so far and has won 69 medals! Currently, China leads with 19 gold medals, followed by the USA with 18 and France with 12.
Team USA Highlights!
The USA has 28 medalists for swimming, 8 of whom have won gold! The USA swimming team is dominating this Olympics! Simone Biles helped the USA gymnastics team win 3 gold medals. She won gold in the Women’s Artistic Individual All-Around and the Women’s Vault. Biles made an incredible comeback from the Tokyo Olympics. She has recovered from the ‘twisties,’ which she described as when the body and mind are unsynced, making performing gymnastics extremely dangerous. Biles is now the most decorated female gymnast in USA history! The USA gymnasts also won a medal in the Women’s Artistic Team All-Around. The USA fencing team has won two gold medals. In track and field, the USA has won 7 medals so far, with more competitions remaining in the following days!
25 Olympic records have been set in various events, but only 4 world records have been broken!
A new world record was set in men’s 100 meter freestyle by Pan Zhanle of China. Zhanle won gold and broke his own world record by an impressive 0.4 seconds.
Lim Sihyeon of South Korea recently broke the world record for women’s individual archery, a record that stood for 5 years! Her score was 2 points higher than the previous world record of 692.
On Saturday, the USA mixed 4x100 meter medley relay team set a new world record! The team, composed of Ryan Murphy, Nic Fink, Gretchen Walsh, and Torri Huske, set a time of 3:37.43. They broke the previous world record by just a 10th of a second.
The USA mixed 4x400 meter relay team began the first day of track and field in the Olympics by crushing the previous world record. In the qualifying round, Vernon Norwood, Shamier Little, Bryce Deadmon, and Kaylyn Brown ran a time of 3:07.41. This time shaved 1.38 seconds off the world record! In the final the following day, the Netherlands unexpectedly took the lead! The Netherlands won gold at 3:07.43, while the USA got silver at 3:07.74. Neither team touched the USA’s world record that was set the previous day.
