Biles, Lyles, Marchand, Alfred, Andrade, Duplantis: Relive the biggest sports highlights of 2024
Sport in 2024 was dominated by the Olympic Games Paris 2024. But throughout the year, there were viral moments and heart-warming acts of fair play. Relive the highlights from a busy year of sport.
The Olympic year is almost behind us and we're already into the 2028 Olympic cycle!
Paris 2024 will live long in the memories of the world's best athletes and sports fans around the globe. But it took a lot of hard work to get to Paris, and that work continued even after the Games for many athletes seeking further honours.
So why not look back at what was a bumper year of sport? Olympics.com takes a look at some of the most exciting, amazing and moving moments of the year, featuring the likes of Simone Biles, Noah Lyles, Léon Marchand, Julien Alfred, Rebeca Andrade, Mondo Duplantis, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, and many others.
The highlights are presented in chronological order from January to December.
January 2024: A remarkable lap going viral
Some big events took place in January, including the Winter Youth Olympic Games Gangwon 2024. And from those Games, a viral moment: short track speed skater Yang Jingru of People's Republic of China gained a lap on the field in the early stages of the women's 1500m race without her opponents realising, with Yang slotting in at the back of the pack.
When she took the last-lap bell, the rest of the field thought they too were on their last lap, but had actually completed one lap fewer; Yang easily won the race by over eight seconds. The TikTok video of the race shared by the official Olympics account racked up over 20 million views, with the YouTube replay of the race receiving nearly three million views.
February and March 2024: World records in the pool; Julien Alfred lays down marker
Pan Zhanle was the talk of the swimming world in February when, at the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships, the Chinese star wrote history by breaking David Popovici's men's 100m freestyle world record. Pan did so leading off the 4x100m freestyle relay for China, lowering the mark from 46.86 to 46.80. And he would go on to take another whopping four-tenths off his own record later in the year en route to winning Olympic gold in Paris.
Meanwhile, the start of March saw the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow – a first chance of the year for track and field stars to make their mark ahead of Paris. And did they ever. Before going on to win their nations' first Olympic gold medals in the Stade de France, both Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia and Dominica's Thea Lafond clinched world indoor titles in the 60m and triple jump respectively.
They weren't the only athletes to win their first world indoor titles before going on to taste gold-medal glory in Paris: in the men's high jump, Hamish Kerr completed the double, as did women's long jump champion Tara Davis-Woodhall. Alfred would go on to reveal that her Glasgow victory almost prompted her to quit athletics.
April, May, June 2024: Kopecky stars in Roubaix sprint; Duplantis soars; Sky Brown lends friend Yosozumi a hand
One-day road cycling races can be unpredictable. Sometimes, they end in a bunch sprint. But rarely does that happen in a Monument quite like it did at the Paris-Roubaix Femmes on 6 April, when world champion Lotte Kopecky won a thrilling five-woman sprint in the world-famous Roubaix Velodrome.
Mondo Duplantis broke the men's pole vault world record an incredible three times in 2024. The first came at the Xiamen Diamond League in China where the Swede cleared 6.24m. The other two would follow in August, first at the Olympic Games, where he would raise the bar to 6.25m en route to gold; Duplantis then cleared 6.26m at the Silesia Diamond League three weeks later for his 10th career world record.
May 2024 saw the remarkable run of co-hosts USA in the ICC Men's Twenty20 World Cup, in which the unfavoured U.S. team – in their first ever World Cup, having qualified as co-hosts – reached the last-eight stage of the tournament, which was eventually won by India. That showing augurs well for the hosts of LA28 where T20 cricket will make its Olympic debut.
There was also the first ever Olympic Qualifier Series, held in Shanghai in May and Budapest in June, with athletes in four different sports – breaking, BMX freestyle cycling, skateboarding, and sport climbing – coming together in a multi-sport event doubling as qualifier events for Paris 2024.
Some great stories emerged, including Sky Brown pulling out a big run in Budapest that helped her best friend Yosozumi Sakura obtain a quota spot. "I had to do it for Sakura," Brown said afterwards. "It was definitely very emotional. I looked at (Yosozumi) before I went and I saw her and I knew I had to do it for her."
July and August 2024: Paris 2024 takes centre stage
It was the event of the sporting (Northern Hemisphere) summer – the Paris 2024 Olympics.
And what a show it was, full of emotional, heartfelt moments – and viral memes too – on the sporting field. How many Turkish sport shooters could you name before Paris 2024? Well, after the Games, for most people it's at least one, after Yusuf Dikec went viral for his cool calm attitude during the mixed team air pistol final. His casual behaviour while taking one of the most important shots of his career – with his right hand on his pistol and left hand in his pocket – sparked copycats across the world, including Mondo Duplantis after the latter won pole vault gold.
Meanwhile, Simone Biles marked a successful return to the Olympic Games by winning four artistic gymnastics medals, three of them gold. The one silver she picked up came in the floor event – where she and original bronze medallist Jordan Chiles then created one of the moments of the Games by turning to champion Rebeca Andrade of Brazil and bowing.
For hosts France, it was a remarkable Games. From the first gold medal produced by the men's rugby sevens team - inspired by Antoine Dupont - to Léon Marchand mania, Teddy Riner returning to the top step of the judo podium (twice!), and a medal sweep in men's BMX racing, Paris 2024 proved to be hugely successful for France.
Marchard attracted more attention than anyone with four gold medals in the pool at the La Défense Arena, and became the hosts' poster boy for the Games. Another swimmer, Norway's Henrik Christiansen, gained fame for a very different reason – his glowing reviews of the chocolate muffin in the Olympic Village earned him the nickname "Muffin Man".
Novak Djokovic ended a career-long wait for Olympic gold when he triumphed at Roland-Garros, beating Carlos Alcaraz in the men's singles final. And in the Stade de France, athletics fans were treated to incredible performances, with Alfred and Noah Lyles winning the 100m titles and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone breaking her own women's 400m hurdles world record once more.
There was also an unforgettably touching moment during the women's badminton victory ceremony when He Bingjiao paid tribute to her semi-final opponent, Carolina Marín, by bringing a Spanish Olympic pin onto the medal podium with her. Marín led their clash before being forced to retire with a serious knee injury, and He showed the best of the Olympic values by sharing her moment with the Rio 2016 gold medallist.
The joy – and virality – wasn't confined to Paris. Over in Tahiti, a particular photo of Gabriel Medina went viral, with the Brazilian surfer appearing to float in the air, attached to his surfboard behind him by a mere tether.
September and October 2024: Skateboarders back at it; women's marathon world record smashed
Barely a month after competing in Paris, the world's top skateboarders headed to another iconic European capital, Rome, for the World Skate Games and World Skateboarding Championships. There, Paris medallists Augusto Akio, Rayssa Leal, and Arisa Trew all added world titles to their hauls from the French capital barely a month earlier, with Trew doing so in the non-Olympic vert discipline. It was quite the year for 14-year-old Trew, who won park gold in Paris and also claimed an X Games title. Her reward for all that? Her own pet ducks.
In October, Kenya's Ruth Chepngetich – the 2019 marathon world champion – became the first woman to run the distance of 42.195km in under two hours and 10 minutes. She took almost two minutes off the previous women's marathon world record of 2:11:53 (mixed men's and women's race) by clocking a scarcely believable 2:09:56 in Chicago.
So comprehensive was Chepngetich's win, the runner-up came in more than seven and a half minutes behind. She dedicated her world record to her compatriot Kelvin Kiptum, the men's world record holder, who was killed in a car accident in February.
November and December 2024: Italy win Davis Cup as Nadal waves goodbye; Egypt seal squash four-peats
As the year wound down, there were a few more loose ends to tie up in the summer sport season. In tennis, the top players returned to representing their countries at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals and Davis Cup Finals in Malaga, Spain. Italy won the women's world team crown for a fifth time before Jannik Sinner led the men to a successful title defence.
The Davis Cup also saw Rafael Nadal bid farewell to professional tennis. With Andy Murray having retired after Paris, nearly two years after Roger Federer hung up his racket, Nadal and Djokovic were left as the last two Big Four players still active. On home soil, it seemed like the whole of Spain was present in some form as the superstar left-hander suffered defeat in his last match as the hosts went down to eventual runners-up Netherlands in the quarter-finals.
The last major World Championships of the calendar year in an Olympic sport came in squash in December, as the LA 2028 additional sport held its World Team Squash Championships in Hong Kong, China. Powerhouses Egypt, who will be eyeing gold medals in both men's and women's events in LA, triumphed in both the men's and women's championships for the fourth consecutive time, going back to 2017 for the men and 2016 for the women. That kind of dominance should give the country great hope of winning multiple gold medals at an Olympic Games in 2028 for the first time since London 1948.
The year has given us so many special moments in sport. What will 2025 hold?