Simone Biles won the gold in gymnastics, but culture warriors were more interested in women's boxing.
The 2024 Paris Olympics ended its first week with the women's all-around gymnastics competition, an event that is always among the most-watched contests at the games. While the outcome wasn't a surprise, it was inspiring. USA! USA!
By far the biggest story of day six at the Paris Olympics is gymnast Simone Biles winning gold in women’s all-around gymnastics. The 27-year-old athlete edged out Brazilian Rebeca Andrade by just 1.199 points.
Other notable day six finishes: 17-year-old swimming phenom Summer McIntosh won her second gold medal by dominating the 200-meter butterfly. China’s Zheng Qinwen upset heavy favorite Iga Swiatek by knocking her out of medal contention in the tennis semifinals. And Liam Corrigan, Justin Best, Michael Grady, and Nick Mead won the first U.S. rowing gold medal in men’s four since 1960.
The Paris Olympics opened with some gender-based envelope pushing: drag queens (gasp!) were included in the opening ceremony. The usual suspects decried it as a "disgrace" and headed for their fainting couches, while everyone else thought "cool" or barely noticed. But the drag queen dust-up was only a preview of a larger gender issue facing the Olympics and sports as a whole.
The Olympics has made steady progress toward gender parity over the last 30 years or so, and 2024 marked a milestone for the games. For the first time ever, half of the athletes competing the Olympic Games are women. A 50/50 split feels like a goal achieved, but the more complex (and politically charged) issue lies within those gender categories.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif instantly became the center of a gender-based firestorm on day six of the Olympics when her opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini, threw in the towel less than a minute into their fight, leading Donald Trump, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, and others to protest Khelif's inclusion in the games. Khelif's lifetime record in the ring is 42 wins and 9 losses—respectable, but not indicative of an overpowering fighter—but she was disqualified from the World Boxing Championships in 2023 by the International Boxing Association which said she failed a gender eligibility test, reportedly due to "high levels of testosterone." The IBA isn't clear about how it tests its athletes, though, and the circumstances behind Khelif's disqualification are murky, to say the least.
Khelif was assigned female at birth. Her passport says she's female, and that's the criteria the Olympics uses to determine eligibility. But, according to the Associated Press, since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, many sports governing bodies like World Aquatics, World Athletics, and the International Cycling Union have updated eligibility rules, and now bar athletes from women’s events who have transitioned from male to female and went through male puberty. The IOC's position is that no scientific or political consensus exists on gender and fairness issues.
You may have seen photos of various Olympians biting into their medals on the the podium like they're chocolate bars. Biting used to be a down-and-dirty way to check if something was gold. Gold is soft, so you can leave teeth marks in it. The Olympics, though, haven't awarded gold pure gold medals since 1912, so athletes are not checking purity. Instead, they're following the directions of photographers. “It’s become an obsession with the photographers,” Olympic historian David Wallechinsky told CNN. “I think they look at it as an iconic shot, as something that you can probably sell. I don’t think it’s something the athletes would probably do on their own.”
Mary Hanna is the oldest athlete at the 2024 Olympics. She's 69 years old and is a reserve rider for the Australian equestrian team. Hanna will only compete if another member of her team can't, but 65-year-old Juan Antonio Jimenez Cobo from Spain, also an equestrian, isn't a back-up, so he's is likely to be the oldest athlete to actually compete at the games this year. So if you want a shot at Olympic glory, get up on that horse; you got four years until the Los Angeles games.
The youngest athlete competing at the Olympics this year is 11-year-old skateboarder Zheng Haohao representing China. She turns 12 a few days after the Women's Final on August 6. There are several other young skateboarders competing—like Thailand's Vareeraya Sukasem who is 12 years old, 13-year-old Heili Sirviö from Finland, and 14-year-old Canadian skater Fay DeFazio Ebert—but there's also a skater on the other side of the age spectrum. Great Britain's Andy Macdonald is competing in the park event on August 7, and he's 50 years old. Macdonald is proof that it's never too late, although whether he breaks a hip remains to be seen.
