Key Points
- The 2024 Paris Olympic Games will kick off on 27 July (Australian time) and will run for just over two weeks.
- Australia could set a national record for the number of medals it brings home this year, according to one forecast.
- Several new sports, such as breaking (breakdancing), will also be making their Olympic debut.
New national sporting heroes are about to emerge and already adored athletes could cement their place in history at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France.
This will be the 30th Summer Olympic Games featuring an Australian contingent and much of the nation is about to turn its focus to the athletes in green and gold.
Some events, including football, rugby sevens, handball, and archery have already .
So what’s in store for this year’s Games?
When is the opening ceremony?
The city of Paris will be on display as part of the opening ceremony for this year’s Olympics.
For the first time in history, the ceremony will not be held in a stadium.
Instead, boats will ferry countries’ teams along the , through the heart of Paris.
Spectators are expected to line a six-kilometre section of the banks of the Seine to watch the proceedings.
The parade will end near the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadéro, the marble esplanade where official proceedings and performances will take place.
While the parade will begin at about 7.30pm on Friday, 26 July (local time) in Paris, those in Australia will have to be up early on the morning of Saturday 27 July if they want to watch it live.
It will start at 3.30am AEST for viewers in Victoria, NSW, Queensland, Tasmania, and the ACT, 3am ACST for those in the Northern Territory and South Australia, and 1:30am AWST for Western Australians.
New sports at the 2024 Paris Olympics
B-Boys and B-Girls will face off in France as breakdancing, or breaking, features as an Olympic sport for the first time.
Australia is among the countries sending competitors to the Games’ solo breakdance battles.
Athletes will windmill, 6-step, and freeze as they improvise moves to hip-hop style beats.
Rachael Gunn, known as ‘Raygun’, is a breakdancer who will compete at the Paris Olympics. Source: AAP / Dan Himbrechts
A new canoe-slalom team event has also been included in the schedule of events.
Kayak cross is described as a combination of all of canoeing’s whitewater disciplines and viewers will be able to watch four competitors simultaneously.
While it has been 40 years since artistic swimmers first competed at an Olympics, it has been a women-only event until this year’s games, at which men will be able to join team events.
A maximum of two men per team of eight people were able to be picked to compete.
Spectators will get their first look at Australia’s 3×3 women’s basketball team at these games.
While the sport was played at the most recent Olympics, this is the first year Australia’s women’s team, the Gangurrus, has qualified.
Australia’s medal chances
The Australian Olympic Team could be in for one of its biggest medal hauls yet in Paris, according to a forecast from Neilsen Gracenote, a provider of data and analytics measurements.
The company’s virtual medal table forecast for the 2024 games is based on available results data from key global and continental competitions since the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Australia comes in fifth up against the other Olympic countries in the table, with 54 medals, a total we only topped in Sydney 2000.
Australia won 58 medals that year.
However, as 16 of those were gold, Athens 2004 is seen as Australia’s most successful medal haul, given that 17 of the 49 medals won there were gold.
At the , due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia took home a total of 46 medals, 17 of those being gold.
Neilsen Gracenote is forecasting Australia will come home from Paris with 15 gold, 23 silver and 16 bronze medals and has noted “achieving this will depend to a great extent on the success of the swimming team.”
Australians to watch at this Olympics
It is probably not unexpected that Australians competing in swimming, athletics, basketball, cycling, hockey and rowing are all but beyond those sports, there are plenty of other events where we’re in with a chance.
Shane Rose, a member of the equestrian team, has ridden in three Olympics and has taken home a medal each time.
He’s also the oldest member of the 2024 Australian Olympic team
Meanwhile, the country’s youngest Olympic competitor, 14-year-old Arisa Trew and her fellow skateboarders, including Olympic gold medalist Keegan Palmer, are also likely to be competitive in their events.
Jessica Fox won gold in the women’s canoe slalom at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Source: AAP / Wu Hong/EPA
Kayaker, Jessica Fox, who earned a gold medal in Tokyo is again part of the canoe-slalom team, but this time her younger sister is along for the ride; Noemi Fox will compete in kayak cross.
The sisters are not the only Australian siblings competing in the canoe-slalom events, as they will be joined by brothers Jean and Pierre van der Westhuyzen.
Representing Australia in Paris will also be golfers Minjee and Min Woo competing in golf, brothers and water polo teammates Blake and Lachlan Edwards and sisters Maddison and Teagan Levi, who are rugby sevens players.
The countries competing in Paris
Australia has selected 460 athletes to compete in the Paris Games, with about half of those making their debut Olympic appearance this year.
A total of 32 different sports will be on show and 329 medal events will take place.
More than 10,000 athletes representing 206 National Olympic Committees from around the world are taking part.
As well as those countries, a Refugee Olympic Team made up of 37 athletes from 15 countries will compete across 12 sports.
The 2004 Olympic Games in Athens is considered Australia’s most successful, with the team taking home a total of 17 gold medal performances. Source: Getty / Gerard Julien
A number of Belarusian and will also compete as Individual Neutral Athletes — without their country’s flags, emblems or anthems — due to sanctions against their home nations
The Palestinian Olympic Committee, which has eight athletes competing in Paris, had made a last-minute plea for Israel to be banned from the games due to the
However, the International Olympic Committee
How can I find out what’s on, and when?
The full schedule for the 2024 Paris Olympics .
When is the closing ceremony?
This will be held on Sunday, 11 August in Paris. But because of the time difference, Australians can watch it early on Monday, 12 August.
It will start a 4am AEST for viewers in Victoria, NSW, Queensland, Tasmania, and the ACT, 3am ACST for those in the Northern Territory and South Australia, and 2am AWST for Western Australians.
How to watch the Olympics
Nine Network Australia has television broadcast rights for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Channel 9 will broadcast up to 22 hours of Olympics coverage each day from the opening to closing ceremonies, cutting into coverage only for news bulletins and NRL games.
9Gem will be broadcasting Olympics action 24 hours a day until 12 August.
9Now and Stan Sport will also be live-streaming.
