Athletics at the 2024 Summer Olympics

Athletics at the Paris 2024 Olympics was held at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. Stade de France was mainly a football and rugby stadium, originally built to host the 1998 FIFA World Cup, and could seat up to 75,000 spectators when set-up for athletics. One thing of interest in 2024 was that the Paris OCOG had commissioned a purple track, the first of its kind at the Olympics.

The programme for 2024 athletics had only two significant changes. Men and women competed in basically the same events, although the high hurdles are 110 metres for men and 100 metres for women, and the multi-event is a decathlon for men and a heptathlon for women.

The changes in the programme dealt with the race walk events. The venerable 50 km walk for men had been on the Olympic Programme since 1932 (except for 1976). There had been voices clamoring for the 50 km walk to be added for women, as it had been at the 2017 and 2019 World Championships, but World Athletics instead elected to discontinue the event for men and replace it with a mixed race walk relay over the marathon distance.

The United States dominated athletics at Paris 2024, winning 34 medals and 14 gold medals, as no other nation won more than four gold medals or more than 11 medals (both Kenya). Individually, three women won three medals, led by American Gabby Thomas with three gold medals in the 200 metres and both women’s relays. The others were Dutchwomen Femke Bol, with one medal of each color, and Sifan Hassan, with a gold and two bronzes. Eleven men won two medals, but only Rai Benjamin succeeded in winning two golds, in the 400 hurdles and 4x400 relay. In women events, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Beatrice Chebet also won two gold medals.

There were three athletes who won a rare third consecutive gold medal in their events: Ryan Crouser (USA) in the men’s shot put, Faith Kipyegon (KEN) in the women’s 1,500 metres, and Nafi Thiam (BEL) in the women’s heptathlon. Three world records were set during the Paris 2024 athletics: Armand “Mondo” Duplantis jumped 6.25 metres in the men’s pole vault; Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone ran 50.37 in the women’s 400 metre hurdles; and the United States mixed 4x400 relay team recorded 3:07.41 in the heats of that event.