Los Paris 2024 Gamesbeyond the marked leadership of USA y China In the medal table, they highlighted the global reach of athletics, one of the basic sports of the Olympic program, which established the record for the largest number of countries that won gold in the same competition.
A total of 27 countries won gold medals in athletics, two more than the previous record. Dominica, Pakistan y Saint Lucia appeared for the first time in the medal table of the discipline with Thea Lafond (women’s triple jump), Arshad Nadeem (men’s javelin) and Julien Alfred (women’s 100) as winners of a historic gold for their respective nations.
Together with Dominica, Pakistan and Saint Lucia, Botswana He also obtained his first athletics title through the sprinter Call Gratitude in the men’s 200 meters – the country’s first Olympic title in any sport -, elevating 105 the total number of nations that have ever won an Olympic medal in athletics.
The total of 43 countries in the Paris 2024 medal table equals that of Tokyo 2020 as the largest in athletics in more than twenty years, while 75 countries finished in the top eight, demonstrating the universality of the discipline.
The president of World Athletics, Sebastian Coethanked the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee for providing the stage on which the sport and its stars could shine.
“Paris 2024 have been absolutely spectacular Olympic Games for athletics. We are a sport in which numbers matter on and off the field of play. Over the course of the competition, our athletes have dazzled audiences in Paris and around the world with performances that will go down in history. We had three world records, thirteen Olympic records and countless national and regional records – the performances were nothing short of outstanding,” said the Briton, who was a legendary athlete before ruling the destinies of the sport.
Among all the medalists, 26 athletes also stood out who went home with more than one medal, among them the Dutch Femke Bol (gold in mixed 4×400, silver in women’s 4×400, bronze in 400 hurdles), her teammate Sifan Hassan (gold in marathon, bronze in 5,000 and 10,000) and the American Gabby Thomas (gold in women’s 200, 4×100 and 4×400).
After competing in the heats for the US men’s 4×400 team, Quincy Wilsonaged 16, became the youngest men’s Olympic gold medalist in track and field history.
High-quality athletics at Paris 2024
Paris 2024 was also possiblen the highest quality Olympic Games in historyaccording to the competition’s performance rankings with 198,320 points.
At the Stade de France three world records were broken with the swedish Armand Duplantis in the pole vault (6.25 meters) and the American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400 hurdles (50s37) and the 4×400 mixed (3m07s41).
Besides, thirteen Olympic records were broken, there were two best Olympic decathlon results, 21 area records, 99 national records, 311 personal bests.
The expectation for athletics is also reflected in the more than a million tickets sold for the different events of this sport, the highest figure ever sold for this sport in an Olympic Games.