Key info for athletics at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will officially get under way on 26 July when the opening ceremony takes place. Just six days later, the eyes of the world will focus on athletics, the No.1 Olympic sport.

Here is everything you need to know about the track and field athletics programme at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

 

Where and when will athletics take place at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?

The athletics programme of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games runs from 1-11 August. All track and field finals will be held during the evening sessions, while all road events will take place in the morning.

For the first time ever at the Olympic Games, the athletics programme will end with the women’s marathon.

In-stadium events will take place at the Stade de France, which has had a purple Mondo track fitted especially for the Games. The stadium, which is in Saint-Denis just north of Paris, has a capacity of 77,083 when staging athletics events.

The marathon course begins at the Hotel de Ville and will end in Les Invalides. The challenging route takes in many of the city’s iconic sights and landmarks.

The race walking events will be contested at Pont d’Iena, a bridge spanning the River Seine.

 

How many disciplines are on the athletics programme?

There are 48 disciplines in athletics at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, meaning 144 medals will be allocated across the 11 days of action. It will be the first Olympic Games in history that has had an identical number of disciplines for men and women.

The marathon race walk mixed relay is the newest addition to the competition programme, replacing the men’s 50km race walk. In the new mixed event, teams of one man and one woman take it in turns to each cover two legs of a relay, covering the full marathon distance between them.

 

How many athletes will compete in Paris?

More than 2000 athletes from some 200 teams have been entered, although those entry figures include reserves. The final start lists will be confirmed nearer to the start of the competition.

The entries include 36 of the gold medallists from the last Olympic Games in Tokyo.

 

How do athletes qualify and gain selection for the Olympics?

The qualifying system for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was published in December 2022. As was the case for the previous Games and the past two World Championships, there was a dual pathway of qualification with 50% of athletes qualifying through entry standards and the remaining 50% qualifying through world rankings.

The qualifying window closed on 30 June 2024 (for the marathon, the qualifying window closed on 30 April 2024). National federations, in conjunction with their national Olympic committee, selected their teams from the list of qualified athletes, often using their national athletics championships as a form guide or selection trial.

Teams can enter up to three athletes in any discipline, plus a reserve. Unlike the World Championships, defending champions do not get a wild card entry.

Teams with no qualifiers in any discipline are permitted to enter one athlete in either the 100m, 800m or marathon. These universality places are designed to increase the diversity and gender balance of participating nations across the sports programme of the Olympic Games.

The majority of places in the in-stadium relay events were earned at the World Athletics Relays Bahamas 24. Similarly, 22 of the 25 places in the marathon race walk mixed relay were earned at the World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships Antalya 24.

 

What is the repechage round and how does it work?

In July 2022 the World Athletics Council approved an innovation to the regular competition format for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, introducing a repechage round to all individual track events from 200m to 1500m in distance, including the hurdles events.

In the new format, athletes who do not qualify by place in round-one heats will have a second chance to qualify for the semi-finals by participating in repechage heats. This will replace the former system of athletes advancing through fastest times (usually denoted by a ‘q’ in results) in addition to the top placings in the first round heats (denoted by a ‘Q’ in results).

These events will now have four rounds – round one, repechage round, semi-finals and the final.

 

Will athletes win prize money?

The International Olympic Committee does not offer prize money to athletes in any sport. Earlier this year, however, World Athletics announced it would reward each of the gold medallists in Paris with US€50,000. Relay teams will receive the same amount, to be shared among the team.

 

Who are the most successful athletes and nations in athletics at the Olympic Games?

The United States has won the most medals in athletics in Olympic history, amassing 827 in total (344 gold, 269 silver and 214 bronze). The USA has topped the athletics medal table at 26 of the 29 Olympic Games to date.

Questions relating to the most successful Olympic athletes are not straight forward to answer. Some athletes are able to compete in relays, while others are not. Sprinters and distance runners are able to compete across a range of disciplines, while most field event athletes specialise in one discipline. The programme of events during the early editions of the Games was different to what it is now (for example, there used to be 'standing' high jump, long jump and triple jump, alongside the regular versions of those disciplines). Some statisticians also include performances from the 1906 Intercalated Games in medal tallies.

Finland's Paavo Nurmi has the most Olympic medals of any track and field athlete, having won 12 medals, nine of them gold. Three of those gold medals, however, were in team events. A further two were in individual cross-country events.

If counting his two titles won at the 1906 Intercalated Games, USA's Raw Ewry has the most Olympic golds in athletics, having won 10, all of which came in 'standing' jumping events between 1900 and 1908.

Counting only disciplines that form part of the current Olympic programme, Allyson Felix has the most medals in total, while fellow US sprinter Carl Lewis has the most golds. Felix has 11 Olympic medals, seven of them gold. Lewis, meanwhile, has 10 Olympic medals, nine of them gold.

Excluding relays, and again counting only disciplines that form part of the current Olympic programme, Jamaica's Merlene Ottey tops the list with seven medals: five silver and two bronze.

The most Olympic gold medals won in a single individual discpline is four. This record is shared by Carl Lewis (long jump) and Al Oerter (discus).

All of these stats, and many more, can be found in the Facts and Figures document for the Games that will be published soon.