Paris 2024 Olympics | Top Stories from the Games

Thank you Paris for putting on an incredible Olympic Games! It’s kept us enthralled for two weeks as we witnessed phenomenal performances, great battles for gold medals, and moments of joy and heartbreak.

Below we’ve got a roundup of all the best running action from Paris, and if you want to know more about what it was like, then The Running Channel team were out in Paris recording behind-the-scenes action from around the Games, and sharing their experiences in a daily podcast. Here’s a compilation of the first half of the track action. 

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PARIS 2024 OLYMPIC GAMES?

As The Running Channel, we focused on all the running action from the track and the marathons, and it was a thrilling nine days of action which saw world and olympic records broken, dramatic photo finishes, some of the fastest races of all time, tension, rivalry, elation and despair. Here’s the best of the action. 

It began with Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei breaking the men’s 10,000m olympic record in a race so fast that 13 men finished inside the previous olympic record!

Julien Alfred won gold in the women’s 100m, beating USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson to win Saint Lucia’s first ever Olympic medal. Earlier that night, GB won 4x400m mixed relay bronze – it was the first of five relay medals the team would win! 

The Paris 2024 Olympics treated the world to the fastest ever men’s 100m final. USA’s Noah Lyles won by 0.005 of a second, as all eight men finished within 0.12 seconds of each other. All men finished under 10 seconds in wind-legal conditions for the first time in history.

There was a glorious gold for GB’s Keely Hodgkinson in the women’s 800m final. Her performance was one of the highlights of a brilliant Games for Team GB. 

USA’s Gabby Thomas was victorious in the women’s 200m final as Julien Alfred won silver and her second medal in Paris. 

GB’s Matthew Hudson-Smith would’ve won gold if his event was the men’s 399m, but unfortunately in the men’s 400m he was passed in the final fraction of a second by USA’s Quincy Hall. It might be some consolation that Hudson-Smith ran the fifth-fastest 400m of all time to win silver, and set a new British and European record. 

In one of the most highly anticipated races of the Games, Cole Hocker shocked the world to win the men’s 1500m in a sensational race. The focus was on the rivalry between GB’s Josh Kerr and Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, but it was Team USA who grabbed all the headlines finishing first and third, as Yared Nuguse won bronze. Kerr was second, but Ingebrigtsen could only manage fourth.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone ran the most dominant race on the track in the Olympics to win the women’s 400m hurdles in a new world record time. We expected a battle between her and the Netherlands’ Femke Bol, but in the end it was McLaughlin-Levrone against the clock. 

There were no smiles for Noah Lyles as the 100m Olympic champion finished third in the men’s 200m final which was won by Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo. Lyles later revealed he’d tested positive for Covid two days earlier. 

The brilliant Beatrice Chebet leaves Paris with two gold medals after winning the women’s 5000m and 10,000m. The Netherlands’ Sifan Hassan won bronze in both of those races as she took on the challenge of trying to win three medals at the Games. 

GB’s women won silver in the 4x100m relay and the men won bronze in their 4x100m relay. A couple of days later both GB’s men and women won bronze in the 4x400m relay. USA’s women dominated the 4x400m relay with gold medallists Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone racing them to a four-second victory ahead of the Dutch.

There was silver for GB’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the women’s heptathlon as she finally wins an Olympic medal at her fourth Games. 

Jakob Ingebrigtsen avenged his disappointment in the men’s 1500m to win the men’s 5000m. On the same night, GB’s Georgia Bell won bronze in the women’s 1500m, with Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon won her third successive 1500m Olympic gold. Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi ran the third fastest men’s 800m of all time to win gold in a photo finish with Canada’s Marco Arop.

And did you watch the Olympic marathons? The Olympic record was broken in both races as Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola, won the men’s race, and Sifan Hassan, won the women’s Olympic marathon. On a course that was one of the most challenging that these runners would have faced, no one expected any records to be broken, making these times even more remarkable. It was especially impressive from Hassan who took on an unprecedented schedule of 38 miles of racing in less than a week, and by winning the marathon she won her third medal of the Games, after bronze in the women’s 5000m and 10,000m. 

GB’s Emile Cairess finished fourth in the men’s marathon, while double Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge dropped out of the race after around 30km – it was the first marathon DNF of his illustrious career. 

WHAT SUPERSHOES WERE USED TO WIN OLYMPIC MARATHON MEDALS?  

In the men’s marathon, it was gold and bronze for adidas Adios Pro Evo and silver for ASICS Metaspeed Edge Paris. For the women, it was Nike Alphafly 3, adidas Adios Pro Evo and On Cloudboom Strike LS.

Before he dropped out, Eliud Kipchoge was wearing a pair of Alphafly 2 in Nike’s ‘Electric’ Olympic colourway.

LOOKING FORWARD TO LA2028!

We’re already sad that the Olympics are over and we have to wait another four years, but we can already look forward to them taking place. Those games are in Los Angeles from 14-30 July 2028 and there are some new and different sports featuring at the LA2028 Games, including cricket, lacrosse, baseball, softball, squash and flag football. 

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Did you have a favourite memory or moment from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games? 

Photo Getty Images / Jewel Samad