Swimming, gymnastics and athletics will receive special attention.
The opening of the Paris Olympics on Friday, like any other Olympics, is sure to surprise with unexpected ups and downs. But like any other, there are some events in the program that are destined to receive exceptional attention because of the special status of their favourites, the intensity of the competition or the records that are at stake.
Swimming
There are many intriguing moments related to the swimming tournament in Paris. But the host country of the Olympic Games will be watching with all its attention one athlete - Leon Marchand, who is already insanely popular and thanks to the Olympics can become the idol of all of France if he achieves everything he has set his sights on in the Olympic pool .
It is no coincidence that Marchand has been compared to Michael Phelps. His coach is Bob Bowman, who once coached the great American who left the sport with 23 Olympic victories. And he is just as omnivorous as Phelps, as he swims equally different styles. Marchand had competed at the previous Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, but he, then 19, lacked the experience to shine. Now he has more than enough, as well as trophies. The Frenchman took two gold medals at the previous year's World Championships and three gold medals at last year's World Championships. And at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, he shocked the world with his 400m indoor swim, clocking 4.02.50 to break Phelps' 15-year-old world record.
In Paris, Leon Marchand will grab several gold medals - in the combined swimming, butterfly and breaststroke disciplines. The most important Olympic date for him will probably be July 31. On this day, the final series of two of Marchand's crown jewels - 200m breaststroke and butterfly - will be held. At first they were placed next to each other. But then, after listening to the requests of the representatives of the organizing country, they were separated a little, for an hour and a half. However, the break is still not that long. And it is not clear whether Marchand will have time to recover his strength during this time.
Gymnastics
Listing the champions of the Olympic Games in Paris, we cannot help but mention Simone Biles and the dramatic details of her biography. At the end of the last decade, Biles was a living icon of American sports. She reigned supreme in gymnastics for many seasons, won four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics and has two and a half dozen different world championship honors. She has always been at or near the top of the respected rankings of top athletes. And the Tokyo Olympics were supposed to be another golden hour for Biles, who is in her prime.
But in Japan, instead of a spectacular triumph, there was a spectacular embarrassment. Already in the qualifying races, it was clear that Simone Biles was not calm: too many mistakes, strange comments on social networks about "an unbearable weight on her shoulders". And after starting her performance in the team final with a terrible quality jump, Biles suddenly left the platform. Without their leader, the Americans, who were considered the favorites, gave the gold medal to Russia, and Simona Biles explained her action with a "mental breakdown", a kind of panic attack that caught her at such an inopportune time.
The consequences of the interruption were simply catastrophic. Biles dropped one start after another in Tokyo. In the end, she still decided to compete - on the beam, but took only bronze with a terribly simplified program. And after the Olympics, Biles disappeared from the sport along with her apparently uninjured problems. The fact of her return last year was a sensation in itself. Behind - a long break in performances, and the age for women's gymnastics is veteran: now the American is already 27 years old.
But it turns out Simone Biles is still awesome. First, she tore through her competitors at home events, and soon, even if she added difficulty in some disciplines, such as the vault, won the all-around at the World Championships in Antwerp, defeating the strong Brazilian Rebecca Andradi and reinforcing this gold with two more - in floor gymnastics and on a beam. And judging by how convincingly Biles has performed in the first half of the current season, her Parisian appetite does not end with three top honors. Although references to the sudden crisis in Tokyo do not lose their relevance.
Athletics
In the "royal discipline" of the Olympic program, several events at once almost guarantee something extremely spectacular. Such is, say, the men's sprint, in which the role of the most attractive bait for the public belongs to the American Noah Lyles. With his demeanor, with his penchant for showmanship, with his magnetism, Lyles really resembles the former sprint leader Usain Bolt, who left the sport with Phelps, more than anyone else. Strictly speaking, he is still far from the achievements of the phenomenal Jamaican, but he is still insanely fast. At the world championships in Budapest in 2023, Lyles won three gold medals - in the 100m, 200m and in the 4 x 100m relay. In Paris, he intends to decorate the team with a medal in the 4 x 400m relay. But probably still it will be difficult for him to put together such a magnificent crop that even Bolt has not collected in one Olympics. First of all, the hundred meters, the first and most prestigious track and field event, raises questions. Before the Olympics, Lyles ran a personal best of 9.81 seconds. However, some of his competitors had almost the same speed during the season, and Jamaican Kishain Thompson's speed was even higher. He ran the 100 meters in 9.77.
As for the chances of seeing a world record, in Paris they are probably the most solid in the jumps. It is about the women's high jump, in which a few weeks ago the Ukrainian Yaroslava Maguchic soared to 2.10 m, surpassing by a centimeter the achievement of the Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova from 1987, as well as the men's long jump. Another showman has reigned there for a long time - the Swede Armand Duplantis. Recently, he has no rivals at all and sets records, one might say, on an assembly line. The previous, eighth in a row - 6.24 m - was in April. And if there's one thing missing from Duplantis' record list, it's an Olympic record. | BGNES
