Paris 2024 Preview
Jake Yono
JY Journalism
7/19/24
Today officially marks one week out from the 2024 Olympics in Paris where we will see the best athletes in the world showcase their skills on a worldwide stage. In this article entry, I will be giving you guys a preview of the games the sharing my concerns and disputes about the Olympic games as a whole spanning from July 24th to August 11th.
The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics contains 32 sports in total from Swimming, Soccer, Track and Field, Basketball, Golf, Martial Arts, and many more. There are 3 sports the committee discontinued and 4 more they added for the 2024 games. First, the 3 discontinued sports are Karate, Baseball, and Softball. Karate was taken out because of its low viewership and that were other mixed martial arts in the competition such as Wrestling, Boxing, Judo, and Taekwondo. Baseball and Softball were taken out because it conflicts with the MLB and professional softball seasons, these 2 sports are set to return to the 2028 games in L.A. The 4 new and interesting sports added to the games are Surfing, Breaking, Sport Climbing, and Skateboarding. All of these sports have gained enough competitors, leagues, and a following to become Olympic sports. The games will be just a tad bit different this go around but overall they will remain the same coming off the Tokyo 2020 Olympics which took place in 2021 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic (Olympic Sports Article NBC).
Although all the Olympic sports are available to watch through NBC's streaming service Peakcock, I will not be watching all of them as I would have to be glued to the TV all day. The sports I will be focusing on are Basketball, Athletics, Soccer, and Golf. I will be checking on others but these are my favorite sports to watch in the Olympic games. In basketball Team USA has a loaded team and is going for gold again with members of Steph Curry, Lebron Games, Anthony Edwards, and some of the NBA's greatest stars. In Athletics, I will be watching the whole thing both men and women as I constantly am following the sport in which I compete, from Noah Lyles in the sprints to Grant Fisher in the 10,000m, sadly track, and field is an underappreciated sport on the professional level. I appreciate how NBC gave it attention during the US Olympic team trials in which the 10-day event reached record highs in viewership. Track and Field is going to be an amazing thrill as there will be high-flying action with world-class athletes running, jumping, and throwing on a world-class stage. In golf, the 4-man team consists of high-ranking Fed-Ex cup point players Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, the 2020 gold medalist Xander Schufalate, and the #1 in world golf ranking points Scottie Scheffler. One thing that concerns me about Olympic golf is that there's no team aspect, these athletes are on Team USA but it is just a title because the whole team cannot win a medal only 1 athlete. It would be very interesting to find out which country has the best golfers in the world and where they get the gold, silver, and bronze medals, I think this would empower Olympic golf to another level as the players who aren't in medal contention still have something to play for (Olympic Golf is all wrong). Moving onto the last sport I will be closely following in these games is soccer, although Team USA's men's and women's clubs are currently in a recession, soccer at a world-class level is still an amazing treat to watch for South American and European national teams. Euro 2024 and Copa America gave us a preview of world-class soccer with Spain and Argentina taking home those championships. Those teams and only France can win gold at Paris 2024 in this 4-group 16-team field.
The Olympic games have always been a controversial topic, to why what teams are allowed to compete due to issues they've had in the past, interfering with a professional league season causing some athletes to opt-out, and on if the infrastructure of the host country and city can handle it before, during, and after the games. For this article, I will be focusing on Paris's infrastructure for the games. In the past what has led people to protest is temporary stadiums and venues being built just for the games, France and the city of Paris have done a great job combatting this as most of the buildings already have a use in being for club teams, concerts, and or other shows in the city. For instance, all 7 soccer venues already have a use, the basketball venues are in use, and the Palace of Versailles is where the equestrian and the modern pentathlon will be taking place. These are all current facilities that can house certain sports, my concern is the temporarily built stadiums and their impact on the city. It would be horrible for Paris to turn out how Brazil and Athens have turned out after the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2004 games in Athens as those facilities are abandoned now and have no use at all. When these venues built just for the Olympics are built the committee always says they will keep and maintain the facilities after the event but in these cases, this was not the case (Olympic Venues After Use). It would be amazing if these facilities could be used after the games for the public and/or competition or practice, this has been accomplished in the past but not in Brazil and Athens, it is a shame to see nothing going on with these once beautiful facilities, I know it's a waste of money but tearing down stadiums after use if they have no purpose after the games are acceptable for me so it doesn't look like a dump after. My solution to this problem is for the Olympic committee to select 5 or 6 cities that have the infrastructure for the games and go in that rotation and while this is happening other cities can slowly build the venues needed to contest these games and host future Olympic games, this means fewer cities have the opportunity to corrupt after the Olympics and during the rotation more cities can build in hope of getting approval from the committee.
Wrapping up Paris 2024 is suiting up to be one for the ages as athletes from a total of the world different kinds of sports at the highest level. Although the event still has a ton of viewership, I mentioned a couple of downsides today to make you aware of them, starting on July 24th over 10,000 athletes from just about every nation will be taking the stage and going for gold this season of the summer Olympics live from the great city of Paris.