Five things to look forward to at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday 7 August

The athletics programme points to a super day seven at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Wednesday 7 August, when there are five sets of medals up for grabs.

 

An Olympic first

The marathon race walk mixed relay makes its Olympic debut in Paris and kicks off the action on day seven.

Six days on from the individual 20km race walk events on the opening day of athletics action at the Games, which were won by Ecuador’s Brian Pintado and China’s Yang Jiayu, 25 teams will take to the roads of the French capital to contest the relay.

Each team, comprising one man and one woman, will complete the marathon distance (42.195km) in four legs alternating man (11.45km), woman (10km), man (10km), woman (10.745km). The event will be held on the same course as the individual events, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Among the teams set to challenge are Spain, Italy, China, Japan, Australia and Peru.

 

World champions clash

Australia’s Nina Kennedy and USA’s Katie Moon shared gold in the women’s pole vault at the World Championships in Budapest last year and they are among the leading contenders for the title in Paris.

As well as her world title win, Kennedy has world bronze from 2022 – a competition won by Moon. Moon is also the defending Olympic champion and has cleared 4.85m this year compared to Kennedy’s 4.88m. The latter is a height that has also been managed by Angelica Moser of Switzerland this season but the world leader, Britain’s Molly Caudery, won’t be competing as she was unable to clear her opening height in qualification.

 

 

Another title for family Alekna?

World record-holder Mykolas Alekna, who threw 74.35m to break the longest standing men's world record on his season opener in Ramona in April, will be looking to follow in his father’s footsteps and win gold in the men’s discus.

Virgilijus Alekna claimed two Olympic titles in 2000 and 2004. Mykolas already has two world medals to his name – silver from 2022 and bronze from 2023 – and he won the world U20 title in 2021.

This time he will be up against the defending champion Daniel Stahl, who won world gold in Budapest last year, plus 2022 world champion Kristjan Ceh.

Alex Rose, who threw 71.48m in May to break the Oceanian record, has already become Samoa’s first Olympic finalist in athletics by progressing from the qualification round and now he’ll look to make more history in the final.

On the medal hunt

The men’s 400m looks set to be an open race for the medals.

USA’s 2022 world champion Michael Norman went quickest in the heats, running a season’s best of 44.10 ahead of the man who beat him at the US trials, world bronze medallist Quincy Hall.

But 2012 Olympic champion Kirani James of Grenada stormed to a 43.78 semifinal win and will be seeking a fourth Olympic 400m medal.

Other contenders include Britain’s world leader Matthew Hudson-Smith, who set a European record of 43.74 in June, and Zambia's Muzala Samukonga, who ran a 43.81 national record in the semifinals.

The final won’t be featuring defending champion Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, however, as he withdrew before the heats.

El Bakkali defends steeplechase crown

Soufiane El Bakkali aims to become the first athlete since Volmari Iso-Hollo in 1932 to successfully defend an Olympic men's 3000m steeplechase title.

The Moroccan 28-year-old also won the world titles in 2022 and 2023 but is set to face a heavy challenge from the athlete who finished runner-up to him on both of those occasions as well as at the Tokyo Olympics – Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma.

Girma has since broken the world record, clocking 7:52.11 at last year’s Diamond League meeting in Paris, and he’ll be hoping his return to the French capital proves just as successful.

 

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