Jeux olympiques de Paris 2024 - Olympic games 2024 in Paris

[Shaytan]

The 2nd week is not as good as the 1st for France but that was expected. Collective sport will still give us more medals, possibly gold.
I am happy that men's football is playing the finale. The olympic tournament is not major and Thierry Henry had a lot of difficulties to find players willing to participate. Captain Alexandre Lacazette was never in Deschamps'plans so this is a good opportunity to at last win something with one of the national teams.

The disappointment comes from men's handball, it's the 1st time since the 1st gold in 2008 that it will not win a medal, at home at that.

I am back from the olympic cauldron. I don't have a good picture to share but the real thing is really captivating.

 

[BK613]

Hocker popping egos was nice and today, it was kinda cool to see 51 year-old Andy Macdonald repping Great Britain in park style skateboarding. Didn't make the final but wasn't last either.

 

[Kilana2]

Almost 93m in the Javelin Throw competition by the guy from Pakistan. Didn´t think that javelins could fly that far in a closed stadium.

Meanwhile France won against Germany in Basketball and the German Hockey team lost a shoot-out against the Netherlands winning the Silver Medal. A very small number of Medals for the Team D. And no German Politician showed any interest in the Olympics so far. They lost interest in sports since Germany dropped out of the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament.....

 

[Orac Zen]

I've never watched sport climbing until these games, but now I'm hooked. Just brilliant stuff.

 

[Shaytan]

I was in the Stade de France yesterday evening just in front of the start of the races and with a great view on the finish line and athlete's celebration. The future bell of Notre-Dame was on the right.



That was a nice evening with great drama with the failure of the american men's relay that I rather heard (the crowd) than saw and Marie-José Perec olympic record broken.

There was also not so great drama with French athlete Alessia Zarbo colapsing during her 10 000 m. I read this morning that she was feeling better now.

 

[Shaytan]

I was at the finish line of women's marathon this morning. Great ambiance to encourage every athletes from the medal gold Sifan Hassan to the 80th, Kinzang Lhamo from Bhoutan who arrived 1h30 later and 1h after the 79th. She gave us the time to learn everything there is to learn about marathon in Bouthan but she didn't give up and I have so much respect for that.

This ended those olympic games for me and I am sure to keep some long lasting memories, from athletes to organization, security and volunteers and crowd, French and from all over the world.

Aside from sport, France lived a difficult political moment during the few weeks before the opening ceremony and those moments of collective fervor were really needed.

Now, closing ceremony

And then paralympic games, I will be on hollydays and I will try to see one or two events.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Closing ceremonies have been very underwhelming to me so far as compared to the opening ceremonies. Very dull, dreary and slow moving. Quite the contrast from 2 weeks ago.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Watching the Half Time Show, er, the Closing Ceremony, live. I wish they would skip all the song and dance routines, unless they were attributable to the host country. The more artistic and abstract performances are preferable.

 

[Orac Zen]

It's been a great couple of weeks. Thanks, France.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Watching the Half Time Show, er, the Closing Ceremony, live. I wish they would skip all the song and dance routines, unless they were attributable to the host country. The more artistic and abstract performances are preferable.

Yeah, I agree. I fast-forwarded through most of the first half including the concert performance. The dancing part to get the rings up was much too slow, and I couldn't tell what was going on half the time due to the lighting.

 

[Gryffindorian]

I thought the Olympic rings segment was one of the highlights of the program. More acrobatics and pyrotechnics would've been nice.

 

[Jack Wolfe]

From the looks of things, Hollywood Los Angeles 2028 is going to be the cheesiest Olympics ever.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

I was happy that Phoenix were performing. Lisztomania and 1901 are great songs. Brought that dance vibe to end the games.

 

[Shaytan]

I liked the closing ceremony less than the opening : too much protocol and it missed a very strong musical number. The 2 guys in helmet refused to reunite for the occasion and despite what a few people tell, France is still not a dictatorship so they were left sulking wherever they are.

I like the dreamlike part but I don't mind strange things. My favorite musical moment was Kavinsky with Angèle.

I am sorry to say that I found the Los Angeles part a little too cliché but I am sure that the 2028 olympic games will be great, I trust Americans to put on a show !

 

[Owain Taggart]

I liked the closing ceremony less than the opening : too much protocol and it missed a very strong musical number.

Same. Agreed. I felt like there was something missing, which was disappointing seeing as the opening ceremonies were so well done.

 

[Nyotarules]

Its interesting watching nations with extremely small black populations (including the UK) and with the rise of the Far right in Europe, having black athletes on their teams. The rabid Right must be foaming at the mouth

I suppose after the last two weeks and after the Paralympics, Western Europe will go back to wearing their anti immigrant hat

 

[Shaytan]

I want to end this thread in a less inappropriate way and I have now the possibility because I went to visit the cauldron and the metal horse (named Zeus) from the opening ceremony :

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I am going to see some blind football tomorrow evening at the Eiffel Tower stadium and that will be the end of Paris 2024 in person for me.

 

[B.J.]

Very cool seeing the horse and all its mechanisms, but personally I'd like to see the underwater part of it too.

 

[Shaytan]

Very cool seeing the horse and all its mechanisms, but personally I'd like to see the underwater part of it too.

It's actually a sort of trimaran with an engine.

Eiffel tower stadium last tuesday :

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Very happy to discover blind football, some players definitely are more skilful than a lot of Ligue 1 players. I can't wait for France Argentina in the finale today.

I can already feel the Paris 2024 hangover...

 

[B.J.]

We've all seen the medal table, and there have been various complaints that it's not fair, especially to smaller countries, to order it by total number of medals. Even as an American, I agree with this. So, what's the best way to normalize this data? Some have said it should be by the country's population. But there is no good correlation between population and number of athletes sent, plus not all countries enter all events. Others have said to normalize it by number of athletes. But that's far from accurate, since a single athlete could enter many events (especially swimming and track), while you have an entire team in sports like football that counts for just one medal.

The best way that I could come up with to normalize the data was by number of entries into events. This shows to me the chances each country had of getting a medal. For the raw data, I used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Summer_Olympics_medal_table, and the individual country pages linked to that one, so there may be some errors. (It was a pain collecting all the data!)

So here's my top ten, ordered by gold (like the medal table usually is):

Congrats to Dominica! They sent only 4 athletes, but still managed to come home with a gold.

But what about just getting to the podium?

Saint Lucia managed to hit the podium an impressive 40% of the times they entered events!

Here's my full list of countries, ordered by gold, then silver & bronze. I only included those that won medals.

And for the raw data if you want to error check me (and get an eye chart too!), here's that:
https://imgur.com/zuwgj2Y

So, what do you think?