Key events
The other key question to ask is: what will we do with our post-Games blues when it’s all over? Let’s not think about that just yet.
Team GB to take part in military-style decompression interviews after Games
Team GB athletes will be encouraged to take part in decompression programmes following the conclusion of the Paris Olympics in a move designed to follow the example of military personnel returning home.
The initiative, which has been drawn up by the UK Sports Institute (UKSI), is intended to help competitors reacclimatise to life away from the tightly curated environment of the Olympic village and the routines imposed by competition.
Originally conceived as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, when athletes were forced to step away from full-time training and competition, there have been early signs of a keen uptake of the service, which will consist of tailored interviews between athletes and a network of mental health professionals.
“Performance decompression is designed by the UKSI performance psychology team,” Dr Carrie McRea of the UKSI told the PA news agency. “It is mirrored to the military process. Essentially it’s a structured interview for about 60 to 90 minutes with somebody who’s trained in decompression. So that might be somebody from performance psychology, some clinical psychologists are trained up, and performance lifestyle advisors.
And then to start planning what we call ‘time zero’, so that’s essentially from the point you get back off the plane or train, what are you going to do? What’s going to be your plan? The focus is on reconnecting with normal life. Getting people to think beyond the Games. Often people haven’t really thought what that looks like.”
There will be 327 athletes competing for Team GB in Paris across 26 sports, with 172 female competitors to 155 male. Many of them will have worked closely in the build-up with the UKSI whose remit is to provide support in field of science, medicine, technology and engineering services.
The decompression programmes are one of a number of policy arms in the pursuit of competitive advantage in Paris.
“It came from Covid times,” Team GB’s head of performance services Greg Retter told PA. “The athletes had suddenly had to stop, no training, no competition, nothing. Then they started to re-engage with it again. There was a whole piece that was done by the psychology team looking at what was the psychological burden of having to stop like that?
“That process of talking about that and navigating your way back to becoming a full-time athlete again post-lockdown has informed this work, which is when you come back from a Games, it’s a really good opportunity to have that moment to reflect. Every athlete will be offered it. Obviously not everybody will take it up. But what we’re seeing is that because there’s been really good uptake, that then disseminates amongst athletes and staff.
“Something we’re doing a lot of work on is to engage family and friends. Because it’s not an isolated experience. It’s the planning of their time zero, thinking about who’s going be around to understand what I might be feeling, how I might be coming across. The post-Games blues is probably a reality. During the Games you’re so connected to so many people, and you come home and everything’s dialled down. It can take a while to reconnect to your reality, meanwhile the rest of your reality continues. It takes a while to recalibrate to what that feels like.” PA Media
A nice little detail from this piece: more than 8.8 million tickets have already been sold for Paris 2024, more than for any other Olympics. A further million tickets remain available for members of the public to buy from the official website.
I would tentatively add to that venues list the venue for surfing, which will not take place in Paris at all, but 15,000km away in Tahiti, part of French Polynesia. That beats the record for the furthest event from a host city, set at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics when equestrian events were held in Stockholm due to quarantine restrictions.
Here is a bit more background on the surfing. Interesting that competitors will have six days prior to the start of the contest to practise. However, security is expected to bar surfers from assessing the wave from watercraft, and sessions will be regimented. “We normally are free to roam and can surf whenever we want, and we are our own dictators on when we want to surf and how we want to approach the event,” Australia’s Molly Picklum has said. “But for the Olympics, you get given a time slot, and then that’s the time you have to surf, and you’ve got to make it work if the waves are good or bad.”
It is a world-renowned spot for surfing, with a wave previously considered so dangerous that women’s events were banned in 2006, and only reintroduced to the World Surf Tour in 2022 after the Olympic announcement. The decision to cancel the event in 2006 was reportedly made without consultation and has drawn criticism over the years since.
Cancellation of the world tour event didn’t spell the end of women surfing the wave. In 2015 the Hawaiian world champion longboarder Kelia Moniz famously attempted to surf the heavy wave on a longboard – a challenge far greater than surfing it on a shortboard. In 2016 Kennelly won the WSL XXL Big Wave Awards Barrel of the Year at Teahupo’o, an award with no gender criteria. Kennelly was the first and only woman to have achieved this feat, and was also the first woman to tow surf the wave when pulled in by a jet ski in 2005.
I enjoyed this piece, on the most iconic venues at the 2024 Games.
First venues on the list are obviously the beach volleyball arena, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, as well as the Champ de Mars Arena venue for judo, wrestling, which will also host the para judo and wheelchair rugby during the Paralympics.
This is a good place to whet your appetite: our writers have rounded up six GB athletes, six Australians, six Americans and six from around the world who have stories well worth following.
The opening ceremony is on Friday, involving a waterborne extravaganza in which more than 10,000 athletes and national officials will sail down the Seine in 160-plus open-topped boats, and will be watched from the river’s banks by 300,000 spectators.
As is customary, there will be a few events this week, starting on Wednesday with the men’s football – including France v USA and Argentina v Morocco.
Preamble
It’s been a long three years since Tokyo 2020 (in 2021) but once again, the best sporting competition in the world is upon us, pushing events as varied as rhythmic gymnastics, sport climbing and marathon swimming front and centre of your screens. Breaking will make its Olympic debut in Paris, as does kayak cross, while surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and 3×3 basketball will all return. Elsewhere there are a host of changes to catch up on: men will be part of the artistic swimming competition, there is a new class in women’s boxing, while the shooting and weightlifting events have been altered slightly.
But let’s not get too bogged down in the minutia. As the athletes arrive this week at the village, and broadcasting trucks set up along the Seine, this is a time to dream big. Embrace the chaos, it is once again time to fall in love with fencing and water polo.
