Simone Biles received the gold in gymnastics, however tradition warriors have been extra eager about ladies’s boxing.
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The 2024 Paris Olympics ended its first week with the ladies’s all-around gymnastics competitors, an occasion that’s all the time among the many most-watched contests on the video games. Whereas the result wasn’t a shock, it was inspiring. USA! USA!
By far the most important story of day six on the Paris Olympics is gymnast Simone Biles successful gold in ladies’s all-around gymnastics. The 27-year-old athlete edged out Brazilian Rebeca Andrade by simply 1.199 factors.
Different notable day six finishes: 17-year-old swimming phenom Summer season McIntosh received her second gold medal by dominating the 200-meter butterfly. China’s Zheng Qinwen upset heavy favourite Iga Swiatek by knocking her out of medal competition within the tennis semifinals. And Liam Corrigan, Justin Greatest, Michael Grady, and Nick Mead received the primary U.S. rowing gold medal in males’s 4 since 1960.
The Paris Olympics opened with some gender-based envelope pushing: drag queens (gasp!) have been included within the opening ceremony. The usual suspects decried it as a “shame” and headed for his or her fainting couches, whereas everybody else thought “cool” or barely seen. However the drag queen dust-up was solely a preview of a bigger gender difficulty going through the Olympics and sports activities as a complete.
The Olympics has made regular progress towards gender parity over the past 30 years or so, and 2024 marked a milestone for the video games. For the primary time ever, half of the athletes competing the Olympic Video games are ladies. A 50/50 break up seems like a purpose achieved, however the extra complicated (and politically charged) difficulty lies inside these gender classes.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif immediately turned the middle of a gender-based firestorm on day six of the Olympics when her opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini, threw within the towel lower than a minute into their combat, main Donald Trump, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, and others to protest Khelif’s inclusion within the video games. Khelif’s lifetime report within the ring is 42 wins and 9 losses—respectable, however not indicative of an overwhelming fighter—however she was disqualified from the World Boxing Championships in 2023 by the Worldwide Boxing Affiliation which said she failed a gender eligibility test, reportedly because of “excessive ranges of testosterone.” The IBA is not clear about the way it checks its athletes, although, and the circumstances behind Khelif’s disqualification are murky, to say the least. Khelif was assigned feminine at beginning. Her passport says she’s feminine, and that is the standards the Olympics makes use of to find out eligibility. However, in keeping with the Associated Press, because the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, many sports activities governing our bodies like World Aquatics, World Athletics, and the Worldwide Biking Union have up to date eligibility guidelines, and now bar athletes from ladies’s occasions who’ve transitioned from male to feminine and went via male puberty. The IOC’s place is that no scientific or political consensus exists on gender and equity points.
You could have seen images of assorted Olympians biting into their medals on the the rostrum like they’re chocolate bars. Biting was once a down-and-dirty option to test if one thing was gold. Gold is mushy, so you may go away tooth marks in it. The Olympics, although, have not awarded gold pure gold medals since 1912, so athletes will not be checking purity. As an alternative, they’re following the instructions of photographers. “It’s turn out to be an obsession with the photographers,” Olympic historian David Wallechinsky advised CNN. “I believe they take a look at it as an iconic shot, as one thing that you could most likely promote. I don’t assume it’s one thing the athletes would most likely do on their very own.”
Mary Hanna is the oldest athlete on the 2024 Olympics. She’s 69 years previous and is a reserve rider for the Australian equestrian workforce. Hanna will solely compete if one other member of her workforce cannot, however 65-year-old Juan Antonio Jimenez Cobo from Spain, additionally an equestrian, is not a back-up, so he is is prone to be the oldest athlete to truly compete on the video games this yr. So if you’d like a shot at Olympic glory, stand up on that horse; you bought 4 years till the Los Angeles video games.
The youngest athlete competing on the Olympics this yr is 11-year-old skateboarder Zheng Haohao representing China. She turns 12 just a few days after the Girls’s Remaining on August 6. There are a number of different younger skate boarders competing—like Thailand’s Vareeraya Sukasem who’s 12 years previous, 13-year-old Heili Sirviö from Finland, and 14-year-old Canadian skater Fay DeFazio Ebert—however there’s additionally a skater on the opposite facet of the age spectrum. Nice Britain’s Andy Macdonald is competing within the park occasion on August 7, and he is 50 years previous. Macdonald is proof that it is by no means too late, though whether or not he breaks a hip stays to be seen.
Day six Olympics wrap-up: Biles wins gold
Gender and the 2024 Olympics
Why are Olympic athletes pictured biting their medals?
The oldest and youngest Olympians on the 2024 Olympics
