Winners and Losers from Week 1 of the 2024 Paris Olympics

Kerry Miller@@kerrancejamesFeatured Columnist IVAugust 2, 2024Winners and Losers from Week 1 of the 2024 Paris Olympics0 of 10

Simone BilesPete Dovgan/Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Nearly 100 gold medals have already been awarded in the first week of the 2024 Paris Olympics, producing no shortage of unforgettable winners and tough-luck losers.

If you’re just now catching that Olympic fever, though, allow us to get you caught up on some of the biggest happenings and stories at what is roughly the midpoint of these Summer Games.

Unapologetically, most of our focus is on the Team USA side of things. But fear not, international readers. Incredible performances from Europe, Asia and Australia will be highlighted among the winners, too.

Winners and losers are presented in no particular order, but you know we’ve got to start with the Golden Girls.

Winner: The Golden Girls1 of 10

Set Number: X164561 TK1

For the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, the originally stated nickname of F Around and Find Out was…underwhelming.

A far cry from the Magnificent Seven in 1996. Or the Final Five in 2016. And maybe not the best for sharing with small children.

However, the updated nickname of Golden Girls gets a perfect 10.0 for execution.

In a sport historically dominated by teenagers—the oldest member of Italy’s silver medal-winning team turned 21 in February—Team USA’s women are comparatively old ladies.

Hezly Rivera is the exception to that rule at 16 years old, but she didn’t actually compete in the team event. It was 21-year-old Suni Lee, 23-year-old Jordan Chiles, 24-year-old Jade Carey and the 27-year-old GOAT Simone Biles on all the apparatuses.

Age is just a number, though, and the Golden Girls racked up some incredible numbers to secure a gold medal that was never in doubt.

Not only did they have the highest overall score by a margin of nearly six points, but they had the highest team score on each of the four apparatuses, too.

Biles didn’t even attempt her most difficult vault, but they still lapped the field in that department, sticking landing after landing throughout the event.

The only minor hiccup came in the balance beam, when Chiles fell right at the beginning of her routine. She hopped back up and did a masterful job the rest of the way, though.

This was the ninth consecutive Olympics in which the U.S. women medaled in team gymnastics, with golds coming in each of 1996, 2012, 2016 and now 2024.

Then, in the individual all-around on Thursday, the Golden Girls got some more hardware.

Biles gave everyone a scare with a slight mishap on the uneven bars in the second of the four rotations, but she had the highest score of anyone on vault, the highest score of anyone on beam and the highest score of anyone on floor, ultimately winning by a landslide over Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.

And behind Andrade for bronze?

Lee, who won the all-around in Tokyo three years ago.

Loser: The Nerd Stereotype2 of 10

Stephen NedoroscikDaniela Porcelli/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

Remember those dumb teen movies from the ’90s like She’s All That where the undesirable, nerdy, artsy girl suddenly becomes a stone-cold fox simply by taking off her glasses and letting her hair down?

Or how about Family Matters, when Jaleel White would step into a machine and transform from klutzy dork Steve Urkle into heartthrob Stefan Urquelle?

That.

That’s what pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik provided in anchoring USA’s first medal in the men’s gymnastics team event since 2008.

With pommel horse coincidentally selected as the sixth and final apparatus for Team USA, the broadcast fixated on Nedoroscik for quite literally hours, knowing it could all come down to the bespectacled electrical engineer who can solve Rubik’s cubes in under 10 seconds.

And when it did, he took off his glasses and absolutely crushed it.

The margin between USA for bronze and Great Britain in fourth place ended up being so wide (2.266 points) that Nedoroscik just about could have fallen off the pommel horse altogether and it wouldn’t have made a difference. However, his 14.866 score was tied for the second-highest of any gymnast on pommel horse that day, and was the highest score that any American scored on any apparatus that day.

That’s how you become a cult hero.

Nedoroscik wasn’t the only nerd-turned-medalist, either. The next day, Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen won gold in the men’s 800m freestyle event before swapping out his goggles for glasses, holding his gold medal on the podium like Harry Potter celebrating catching the golden snitch.

Nothing but love, to be clear. I watched both events while wearing glasses, in a room with my applied mathematics degree, mindlessly playing on a phone with an extensive Pokémon GO collection.

Three cheers for representation, which all jokes aside, is a pretty big deal. Getting called a nerd as an adult is frankly more of a compliment than an insult, but it has had a polar opposite impact in the middle/high school age for decades. Seeing Nedoroscik as quite literally one of the best in the world at something incredibly athletic is kind of awesome.

Winner: Ilona Maher, Alex ‘Spiff’ Sedrick and US Women’s Rugby Sevens Squad3 of 10

CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images

We expect American stars to emerge from a handful of select Olympic disciplines every four years.

Swimming, gymnastics and track & field are the big three.

Perhaps beach volleyball or the occasional cyclist.

But women’s rugby sevens?

That’s a new one.

The sport had its glow-up in the USA this week, though, thanks to Ilona Maher and her Derrick Henry-like ability to either plow through or stiff arm into oblivion her would-be tacklers.

Maher scored a try in each of Team USA’s three matches in pool play and continued to deliver bone-crushing hits into the knockout portion of the tournament, playing a colossal role in getting the Americans into a position for their first Olympic medal in Rugby Sevens in either gender.

It was Alex ‘Spiff’ Sedrick, though, who delivered the most unforgettable moment in the bronze-medal match against heavy favorite Australia.

Down 12-7, backed up against their own goal line with no time left on the clock, it looked like they were toast. They had to score on that possession and had to go the length of the field to make it happen. So Sedrick put the team on her back, breaking not one, not two, but three tackles before breaking loose and outrunning everyone for the game-tying try and eventual winning conversion.

It was a Music City Miracle type of moment that won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

Loser: Coco Gauff 4 of 10

Coco GauffMehmet Murat Onel/Anadolu via Getty Images

Coco Gauff is one of the best tennis players in the world, currently ranked No. 2 behind only Poland’s Iga Świątek. She has seven singles titles in her career, including one Grand Slam at last year’s U.S. Open. She has also won nine doubles titles, one of those coming at the French Open just two months ago. (Gauff also made it to the semifinals in the singles portion of that Grand Slam before losing to Świątek.)

This trip to France was considerably less productive for her, though.

Gauff was eliminated by Croatia’s Donna Vekić in the third round of the women’s singles tournament on Tuesday in what was both dramatic and controversial fashion.

After Vekić took the first set in a tiebreak, there was an incident at a crucial juncture midway through the second set. A linesperson called Vekić’s shot out while Gauff was in the middle of her swing, which she proceeded to hit into the net. However, the chair umpire overruled the linesperson, saying the shot was in and awarding the point (and the game) to Vekić.

This led to a heated exchange from which Gauff never recovered, neither in that match nor in her subsequent doubles matches.

Gauff and Jessica Pegula were the No. 1 seed in the women’s doubles tournament, but they were ousted in the second round the following morning by Czechia’s Linda Noskova and Karolina Muchova. And a few hours after that, the No. 3-seeded team of Gauff and Taylor Fritz lost to Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime and Gabriela Dabrowski in the mixed doubles quarters.

As a top-three seed in all three events, Gauff’s odds of getting at least one medal were extremely high. There was a decent chance she would join Serena Williams (2012), Venus Williams (2000) and Nicolás Massú (2004) as the only tennis players in the past century to win at least two gold medals in the same Olympics. There was also a non-zero chance of Gauff becoming the first tennis player to win three medals in a single Olympics.

Instead, she’ll head home with nothing.

Winner: France’s Léon Marchand5 of 10

Leon MarchandMustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images

Michael Phelps won 23 gold medals in his Olympic career.

One thing he never did, however, was win two individual golds on the same day.

He did have some double dips if we include relays, securing gold in both the individual 200m fly and the 4x200m free relay events on the same day in each of the 2004, 2008 and 2016 Olympics. But his 13 individual golds all came on different days.

France’s Léon Marchand just pulled off that incredible feat, though.

Not only had Phelps never done it, but no one in Olympic history had done it since East Germany’s Kornelia Ender in 1976.

Nevertheless, Marchand—who had already won gold by a fairly convincing margin in the 400m IM on Sunday—took gold in both the 200m fly and 200m breast in the span of a little less than two hours.

Moreover, the man set an Olympic record in both swims.

The home favorite’s events have been full-blown experiences, too.

French patrons line up hours in advance to get into Paris La Defense Arena to lose their minds while he is in the pool. The way they scream every time his head pops out of the water for either the breast or fly stroke is like something out of a “WWE audience” playbook.

The last time we witnessed something quite like it was the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, when Ian Thorpe (AKA the Thorpedo) won five total medals in front of a raucous home crowd.

Marchand isn’t finished yet, either. He’ll be going for his fourth gold medal when the 200m IM final occurs a little before 3 p.m. ET on Friday.

If you’ve yet to watch any of his swims this week, be sure to make time for that one.

Winner: Katie Ledecky 6 of 10

Katie LedeckyTim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images

In the finals of the women’s 1,500m free on Wednesday, Team USA’s Katie Ledecky obliterated the “competition” by a margin of more than 10 seconds.

By the end, she was so far ahead of the field that it looked like she was just going for a leisurely swim by herself.

She reasonably could have hopped out of the pool and been a spectator to the battle for silver.

This was, of course, inevitable.

Ledecky is now responsible for the 20 fastest recorded times in the history of the women’s 1,500m free, with Wednesday’s gold medal time checking in at eighth on that list.

It’s a shame for Ledecky’s career medal count that the 1,500m wasn’t added as an Olympic discipline for women until the 2020 Games, because she surely would have won two more golds in 2012 and 2016. At any rate, she won gold at the World Championships in each of 2013 and 2015, setting the world record a combined three times between them—doing so in both medal races, as well as the qualifying heat in 2015.

To be clear, though, her career medal count is already absurd, boasting eight golds among her 13 total medals, with one more medal (probably gold) all but certainly coming her way Friday in the 800m free event.

There are five other swimmers in Olympic history tied with 12 career medals, but Ledecky and Michael Phelps (28) are the only ones with more than a dozen.

She is now the most decorated U.S. woman in Olympic history. And you can already take it to the bank she’ll be swimming at least the 800m and 1500m four years from now in Los Angeles.

Loser: The Pool7 of 10

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images

Several of our biggest winners from the first week did their work in the pool of the Paris La Defense Arena.

But the pool itself became a major topic of conversation as the entire world is swimming just a little bit slower than usual.

Is the pool too shallow? Something up with the water itself?

Whatever it is, it was clear from the outset that something wasn’t quite right.

Germany’s Lukas Märtens took gold in the first event, winning the men’s 400m free with a time of 3:41.78—more than a full second slower than the silver medal time (3:40.70) of Tunisia’s Ahmed Hafnaoui at last summer’s Worlds in Fukuoka, and nearly two seconds behind both the world record (3:40.07) and Olympic record (3:40.14) times in that distance.

Similar story in the women’s 400m free a few minutes later when Australia’s Ariarne Titmus’ gold-medal swim of 3:57.49 was more than two seconds slower than the world-record time of 3:55.38 that she set last summer, as well as more than a second behind Katie Ledecky’s Olympic record of 3:56.46 from eight years ago.

So it went throughout the week, as those superimposed world-record-pace lines gradually vanished in every race, frequently resulting in gold medals won at two or more seconds slower than world-record times.

China’s Pan Zhanle did finally set a world record in the men’s 100m free on Wednesday, besting his own record set earlier this year by 0.4s.

Still, one world record?

That’s it?

This is a complete 180 from the Beijing Games in 2008 when a staggering 25 world records were broken and the fairness of those LZR Racer body suits were called into question and eventually banned a few years later.

Even after that change, there were nine world records broken in London in 2012, eight in Rio in 2016 and six three years ago in Tokyo.

Quite a few Olympic records have fallen, with Léon Marchand responsible for three of those. However, the lack of world records is bizarre.

Winner: Australia’s Jessica Fox 8 of 10

Jessica FoxAlex Davidson/Getty Images

Canoe/kayak slalom is easily the most fascinating Summer Olympic discipline that has never gained much traction in the United States for some reason.

As if it isn’t difficult enough just to avoid capsizing in a boat by yourself in whitewater rapids, sure, let’s paddle as fast as possible through some narrow gates, fighting the current on several of them after being required to execute a U-turn. It’s wildly entertaining to watch.

One of the best in the world at it is Australia’s Jessica Fox.

She won gold in the inaugural women’s canoe slalom event at the 2020 Olympics and came oh so close to gold in the women’s kayak slalom in each of 2012, 2016 and 2020, taking one silver and two bronzes.

Fox was just 18 years old a dozen years ago in London when she came 0.61s shy of winning the gold. And three years ago in Tokyo, she finished the final in the fastest time by a several-second margin, but had to settle for bronze when she was penalized four seconds for touching a pair of gates.

At long last, though, Fox had her moment in the K-1 sun with a flawless run in the finals on Sunday, winning by 1.45s.

Better yet, Fox double-dipped three days later by defending her 2020 gold in the C-1 slalom. She had the second-best time in both the prelims and the semifinals of that event, but she dominated the final, winning by more than two seconds, even with a two-second gate penalty.

She is now one of 13 athletes (first Australian) with at least six career medals in canoeing.

Loser: USA in 3×3 Basketball9 of 10

Jimmer FredetteElsa/Getty Images

In regular ol’ five-on-five hoops, Team USA is dominating. Both the men and the women won their opener by a margin of 26 points before proceeding to somewhat comfortably win the second of their three pool-play games. It is likely—maybe even inevitable—that they will go a combined 12-0 en route to their gold medals.

In 3×3 hoops, however, it has been a drastically different story.

Granted, the likes of LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Stephen Curry, A’ja Wilson, Kevin Durant and Diana Taurasi are anchoring the full-team rosters while the 3×3 squads are considerably less star-studded.

It is also fundamentally a different sport. 3×3 is to normal basketball what indoor soccer is to a proper World Cup match, and we wouldn’t expect Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo to dominate quite as much in indoor.

Still, what the heck, gang?

In both the men’s and women’s events, Team USA started 0-for-3 in 3×3. The seal was finally broken with a women’s victory over Spain on Thursday. However, the men (sans Jimmer Fredette with a leg injury) shortly thereafter fumbled away a 19-15 lead in a 21-19 loss to Latvia, falling to 0-4 with three games left to play.

The good news is six of the eight teams advance to the knockout portion of the tournament, so they aren’t officially eliminated yet.

They are both in last place, though, so the dream of finishing top two and getting a bye into the semifinals is effectively dead. The odds of medaling in either tournament are looking mighty slim, too.

Suffice it to say, that has changed.

Winner: South Korea’s Aim10 of 10

South Korea’s Lim SihyeonPUNIT PARANJPE/AFP via Getty Images

Most Olympic events are meant to prove who is the biggest, fastest/quickest and/or strongest in the world.

Two major exceptions to that rule are the archery and shooting events, where it’s all about who has the steadiest hand.

And thus far, South Korea has put on quite the unshakeable show.

As far as the archery goes, what else is new?

Since adding the team events to the list of Olympic disciplines in 1988, South Korea entered Paris having won multiple golds in nine consecutive Olympics, with a total medal count of 26 gold, nine silver and six bronze in that window. That includes a clean gold-silver-bronze sweep in the women’s individual event in each of 1988 and 2000.

Of the 13 possible archery golds available between 2012, 2016 and 2020, South Korea won 11.

Unsurprisingly, they are 2-for-2 thus far this year, taking gold in the women’s team event on Sunday and in the men’s team event on Monday. Very good chance they’ll also take gold Friday morning in the mixed team event, and might go a perfect 5-for-5 with wins in the individual events this weekend.

South Korea already taking two golds and two silvers in the shooting events is much more surprising, though. They fared well with five total shooting medals in 2012, but they came away from Tokyo with just one silver medal, this after two total medals in shooting in 2016.

The real winner of the shooting events, however, has been this 51-year-old maverick from Turkey. Yusuf Dikeç went viral on Tuesday for nearly winning gold in the 10m air pistol mixed team event without any of that fancy-pantsy ear protection or specialized equipment:

NBC Olympics & Paralympics @NBCOlympicsNo fancy lenses. No headphones. Just vibes.

Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec was cool as a cucumber en route to silver in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team. 😎 #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/p7yu1hXl5x