PARIS:
The largest sporting occasion of 2024 was doubtless the Parisian high-wire double-act of the Olympic Video games adopted by the Paralympics.
From a vibrant, generally controversial and sodden opening ceremony to boxers caught up in a gender row to refugees on the rostrum, they served up many memorable moments.
AFP Sport seems to be at 10 of the perfect:
Organisers promised a spectacular opening ceremony and the rain-soaked boat parade on the River Seine ended up making world headlines however not for the anticipated causes.
Church leaders and conservatives have been left outraged by a scene involving drag queens and lesbian DJ Barbara Butch that appeared to parody Jesus’s Final Supper.
Creative director Thomas Jolly denied any such intention however he and others concerned ended up dealing with vicious on-line harassment.
If Paris luxuriated within the honour of internet hosting the Video games, Toulouse took French bragging rights for the exploits of its athletes with native rugby star Antoine Dupont securing Sevens gold and Leon Marchand dominating within the pool.
The 22-year-old, urged on by the rhythmic refrain of “Leon, Leon” on the La Protection Enviornment, received 5 medals in complete, 4 of them gold together with a double within the house of two hours which despatched the group into paroxysms of “joie”.
The draw back of such immediate movie star? “I am unable to exit to eating places like I used to anymore,” he mentioned when he acquired again to Toulouse. “I put on a cap and glasses. I attempt to disguise just a little.”
Simone Biles proved as standard a draw because the Eiffel Tower, the 1.42m (4ft 8ins) bundle of gymnastics brilliance standing tall on her return to the Olympics after the trauma of Tokyo in 2021.
In Japan she was compelled to withdraw from a lot of the Video games with a debilitating psychological block referred to as the “twisties”. Three years on, watched by an enraptured full home at Bercy Enviornment together with her husband, NFL participant Jonathan Owens, Tom Cruise and Girl Gaga, Biles resumed the gold run she had begun at Rio 2016.
Biles pipped Rebeca Andrade for the coveted all-around crown on her final transfer on the ground. That was book-ended by titles with the US crew and vault — the place she executed her Yurchenko double pike, the Biles II, her sixth eponymous ability.
Stumbles on the ultimate day as tiredness — each mentally and bodily — set in left her with silver behind Andrade on the ground. In a mark of her class as an individual she bowed to the Brazilian on the rostrum.
World champion Noah Lyles roared to victory in 9.79sec to say gold in a dramatic males’s Olympic 100m closing within the closest end in fashionable historical past — simply 5 thousandths of a second separated him from Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
“I am the person amongst all of them. I am the wolf amongst wolves,” mentioned Lyles whose victory was solely confirmed after a photo-finish.
On the age of 37, Novak Djokovic lastly received an Olympic gold medal to go together with his 24 Grand Slam titles, describing the second as his “biggest achievement”.
The Serb defeated Carlos Alcaraz, 16 years his junior, in a memorable closing at Roland Garros the place he has already been topped French Open champion 3 times.
Djokovic achieved his dream the onerous means — having to defeat career-long rival Rafael Nadal within the second spherical within the pair’s sixtieth and what proved to be their closing assembly.
He then overcame aggravating a knee harm which had wanted surgical procedure in June throughout his quarter-final win over Stefanos Tsitsipas.
One of many iconic shapshots of the Video games got here when Tara Davis-Woodhall celebrated profitable the ladies’s lengthy leap by galloping over to kiss her husband Hunter Woodhall within the stands.