It took 128 years and 29 editions of Olympic competitions for the world to experience Games with an equal number of male and female athletes. At the beginning, women were banned from the first Games, those of Ancient Greece, which centuries later would inspire the Olympic Committee of modernity to create the first competition of this era in 1896. The adjective “modern” was added to the new Games, although Pierre Fredy de Coubertin, known as the father of the Olympic Games, did not stop defining them as “the solemn and periodic exaltation of men’s sport, with the applause of women as a reward”. In 1900, female athletes competed for the first time in the Games and tennis player Charlotte Cooper became the first Olympic champion in history. Amsterdam 1928 was a turning point, with the participation of 300 women, 10% of the total number of athletes. The phenomenon grew until 2024 when 5,250 men and 5,250 women were registered. Many of them became immortal in Paris, either by achieving historic feats for their delegations or by stamping their names in gold in the registers of their disciplines. Here are some of their stories.
Julien Alfred, the athlete who took Saint Lucia to the podium
Julien Alfred (Saint Lucia, 23 years old) did not have to speak in plural when In 2023 he confessed in an interview As a child, she “always said that I wanted to be one of the first medallists from Saint Lucia”. Months later, she became the only athlete from her country with an Olympic medal, since the Caribbean island began participating in the Games in 1996. The feat occurred on the evening of 3 August on the soaked tartan of the Stade de France. Five seconds after the starting gun, Alfred clung to the lead of the race; after eight seconds, there was no one to step on her heels; and at 10.72 seconds, she became the fastest woman on the planet. She left behind the great favourite, the American Sha’Carri Richardson. Not content with this milestone, three days later she took silver in the 200m.
The Saint Lucian began her athletics career at just six years old, after a librarian at her school noticed her talent as a sprinter and encouraged her to compete against the boys in her class. In 2013, the death of her father threatened to put an early end to her career, if not for the efforts of her coach who convinced her to take up the sport again. At 14, she moved to Jamaica alone in search of better infrastructure to prepare. By the age of 15, she was already the Central American and Caribbean under-15 champion and Saint Lucian Youth Athlete of the Year in 2015 and 2017, the year in which she obtained her first international victory in the 100m at the Commonwealth Youth Games. She later moved to Texas when she was already showing signs of being ready for the most prestigious competitions in the world, after winning silver at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires.
In Paris, she was the fastest to shine on a track full of stars. Not only that, she also put her small island of 181,000 inhabitants on the map, which took part in the Games with a timid delegation of four athletes. Alfred has an averted gaze and short answers. She lacks the egomania so typical of triumphant sprinters, as demonstrated by her monosyllabic quotes with the press. “I think that now, being an Olympic champion, people will investigate what Saint Lucia is. I feel very honoured to wear the name of my country on my chest,” she said in a barely audible voice at a press conference after embracing glory.
The ring is Cindy Ngamba’s refuge
What does it mean to bring home a medal for an Olympic champion from the refugee team? The only person who can answer this question is Cindy Ngamba, the Cameroonian-born boxer who has won the only medal for the refugee delegation since their first appearance at Rio 2016. The medal drought was broken on the evening of August 4, in a fight in which Ngamba besieged the host Michel Davine in the ring. The judges’ decision was unanimous for the African to qualify for the semi-final and win her team’s first medal. Ngamba’s reaction after the referee raised her arm to reveal the jury’s verdict was to look for the television camera to point out the shield of her delegation on her shirt, proud to represent her. a nation of more than 100 million atomized throughout the world.
Ngamba emigrated from Cameroon at the age of 11 with her brother Kennet, seeking a better future in the United Kingdom, where she was bullied at school for her poor English and her weight. She found refuge in sport, first in football and finally in boxing. The obstacles to regularising her status in the United Kingdom are a topic she often mentions in interviews, from having to sign documents weekly to remain in the country, to being arrested and taken to a detention centre in London. If she cannot return to her home country it is because she is homosexual, which is punishable in Cameroon with up to five years in prison.
She is currently training in Sheffield, UK, where five of the 37 athletes competing for the Refugee Olympic Team live. Once she obtains a British passport, she will have the opportunity to represent the English team, with whom she trains regularly. “Team GB has always been on my side. I feel like I am part of it, but on paper I am not,” she told the BBC. Independent.
Katie Ledecky: Swimming for gold as an Olympic sport
Wherever you read the resume, Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky Ledecky looks just as legendary: the 27-year-old American, who won four medals in Paris, has become the swimmer with the most gold medals in Olympic history, with a total of nine; she has also positioned herself as the second-most medal-winning American athlete in history, surpassed only by the unreachable Michael Phelps – who has 28 medals to his name, 23 of them gold. At these Games, Ledecky took two golds in the individual 800m and 1500m, a silver in the relay and bronze in the 400m. In addition, she broke the Olympic record in the 1500m freestyle with a time of 15:30.02.
Ledecky began her career at the age of six, encouraged by her mother, who was a college swimmer. She rose to Olympic fame at the age of 15, in her debut at the 2012 London Games, where she took home gold in the 800m freestyle, her specialty, in which she would also win the world record with a time of 8:04.79She has not been defeated in the 800m freestyle for more than a decade, and is the only swimmer to win five consecutive world titles in that event.
The Washington-born athlete is the most decorated woman in world championship history, with 21 world titles and Olympic golds in all distances from 200m to 1500m, making her the greatest swimmer of our time. But the story doesn’t end there. “Right now I see myself competing in 2028, as it’s my home Olympics. It’s something unique, something that not every Olympian achieves,” she told Olympics.com.
The legendary return of Simone Biles
Simone Biles needs no introduction. She is a living legend in gymnastics and an icon outside of it. Her moment of greatest visibility occurred in Tokyo, where she managed to win two medals (silver and bronze), before withdrawing from most events due to mental health problems, specifically the so-called twistiesa mental block that disorients the athlete during aerial manoeuvres, a disconnection between the brain and the body. The sporting world then feared an forced farewell for the gymnast, who still needed four medals in Paris, to complete a list of eleven Olympic medals (seven gold, two silver and two bronze) and 23 golds at the world championships, a record in this discipline. Even on the last day of competition in Paris, when two gold medals slipped away from her, she did not stop smiling. On the contrary, she planned with her teammate Jordan Chiles a bow for the Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, who took the gold, and whose only sin was to have been born at the same time as Biles.
The American raised the meaning of gymnastics to another level by imposing her own pirouettes. Her first creation was the movement known as Biles, an extended double somersault with a half twist, which is now an institution in this discipline. Her name is borne by five gymnastic movements on the floor, the balance beam and the vault, with which she sealed her triumphant return in Paris 2024, where, in addition, she made it very clear that she does not like comparisons: “I am not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I am the first Simone Biles.”
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