USA Track & Field Dominates at 2024 Summer Olympics
The 2024 Summer Olympics have now come and gone. Paris is returning to its normal, touristy state and Team USA is back home celebrating its’ record number of medals, a staggering 126. With dominant performances from basketball to swimming to gymnastics, our country has a lot to be proud of. There was one sport this year, however, that we usually are mediocre at, that we completely dominated this year. The United States won 34 medals on a 400-meter-rubber oval. 14 of them were gold. This summer, we cemented ourselves as one of the best Olympic Track teams of all time, podiuming in 20 out of 35 events.
Some events weren’t too surprising. Noah Lyles and Sha’carri Richardson carried the long time tradition of 100-meter sprint success, leading the charge with a gold and silver medal respectively, both backed up with bronze medals from their teammates. In the 100m hurdles, 400m hurdles and 200m dash, the U.S. women continued to showcase their talent with gold medals in each event. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone even took another few milliseconds off her own world record in the longer hurdles event. The U.S. men showed up in hurdle events with gold medals as well, and Lyles came just short of the 100m and 200m double with a bronze medal, just finishing behind his silver medal teammate, Kenny Bedarek. Quincy Hall sealed the deal for men’s 400m dash with a blazing final straight where he went from 4th to 1st.
Now, although we have become a sprinting powerhouse in the modern Olympics, the longer events have never been our specialty. Many of those championship titles belong to East Africans who spend their seasons training at high altitude, where they’re constantly running in oxygen debt. This allows them to hit the track with an aerobic engine that few can hang on to in the final laps. In recent years on the men’s side, a new phenom has emerged in distance running: a young Norwegian athlete named Jakob Ingebrigsten. At just 23 years old, he already has multiple international titles, World Championship wins, and an Olympic Gold medal in the 1500m run to his name. He was a heavy favorite coming into this year’s races.
This was also the year that the US 1500 Trials record was broken by nearly four seconds by an Oregon alum Cole Hocker. With such dominant runners returning and fast times being run, this metric mile race was one of the most anticipated races of the Games. When the time came, it was Hocker who surged ahead of the field, setting a new Olympic record in the process.
Even though many doubted the U.S. would see a single medal in the men’s distance events, we took at least a bronze medal in every single one outside of 800m and Marathon. Michigan native Grant Fisher took home double bronze in the 5k and 10k after being right on the edge of global medal contention for the past few years. Even the 800 and Marathon saw some of the best American performances in the last decade. No season in recent years has ever seen such talent across all events.
Although the U.S. women put together an extremely strong team with the likes of World Indoor 3k Champion, Elle St. Pierre, and NCAA Champions Weini Kelati and Parker Valby, the world stage was too strong to notch any distance medals. The absence of the 2021 Olympic 800 Champion, Athing Mu, who failed to qualify, was also a tough loss for the team. Mu is the American record holder in the event, but was unfortunately injured throughout the season and was unable to get in shape in time to defend her gold. However, with the young talent emerging and experienced veterans returning, it’s not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when”, for future podium spots.
The next races throughout the world are lining up, and from international invitationals to world championships, American runners are dangerous. This summer paved a new era for this centuries-old sport. With prestigious medals and even potential world records on the line, you may just want to tune in to the Track and Field world. There may be some big things coming.