After the weirdness of the pandemic-era Tokyo Olympics, the Summer Games are back in a big way. We’re not even halfway through the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, and already we’ve been treated to dangerous feats of athleticism, devastating upsets, random celebrity sightings, and Simone Biles proving once again that no one can do it better. We’ve been watching intently, and we don’t plan on turning our screens off anytime soon. We asked Vulture staffers which events excite them the most — including the silly, scary, and downright strange sports we only queue up every four years.
Discus
There’s a whole lot of “first time in the Olympics†buzz around breaking (the sport emphatically not known as break dancing) and men’s artistic swimming (formerly known as synchronized swimming, a.k.a. “I know you! I know you!â€). As much as I appreciate their telegenic qualities and recognize that new events bring enthusiastic young audiences, I am drawn to the events with longevity. I love a sport with records that have been inching up or down since the era when athletes dressed in wool, especially for activities that you never get to see on TV for 3.99 years at a time.
Which brings me to the discus. Take a flat round thing that weighs a couple pounds or so, throw it farther than the rest of the people there do, and you win. What is more Olympian, more purely athletic, more gruntingly elegant than that? It is a sport that rewards sturdy build over lithe lines, and the all-timer, the Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky of the discus, was a burly guy from Queens named Al. As a Greek, I get immeasurably, pointlessly prideful when I see the windup and the throw, because it’s is so very much our thing. The Discobolus, a Roman copy of a Greek statue by Myron dug up in 1781, shows a pose not wildly different from those you’ll see in Paris. The two most obvious differences between the ancient and modern competitions are the size of the discus (today’s is smaller) and the athlete’s uniform, which in 776 BCE consisted of a light coat of olive oil and nothing more. I’m not saying that the International Olympic Committee should bring that second part back, but it would certainly give the broadcasters an extra talking point on Peacock. —Christopher Bonanos
Breaking
I would love to be able to tell you what’s so amazing about breaking as an Olympic event, but I technically can’t because I haven’t seen what it looks like as an Olympic event yet. No one has. Breaking is making its Olympics debut this year, and the B-boys and B-girls battling for medals won’t do their thing until the 9th and 10th of August, the final days of the Paris Games. But the newness of the sport is part of what makes it so exciting. That, and the fact that it will involve an MC and people spinning on their heads at excessively high speeds and, I assume, at least one Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo joke from NBC commentators David “Kid David†Shreibman and Ronnie “B-Boy Ronnie†Abaldonado. —Jen Chaney
Surfing
My knowledge of and connection to surfing is largely limited to that one viral surfer-guy interview, but this year’s Games have made me a permanent fan of watching other people catch waves. This is only the second time surfing has been included in the Games, with the sport debuting at the Tokyo Games in a relatively mid surfing locale. But this year, the Olympians are hanging ten in Teahupo’o, Tahiti — a gorgeous, terrifying, and extremely dangerous place to surf, according to both experts and anyone with eyes. These waves are huge, and an added bonus (sarcasm) is that they slam into a sharp, shallow reef. Many surfers needed to be rescued on Monday by Jet Skis, adding another layer of drama to the proceedings. The rules are simple: You catch a wave, and the judges score how well you rode that wave on a scale of ten. (There are a few other rules, but for the purposes of casual viewing, you don’t really need to worry about it.) Truly, surfing is a perfect TV sport, with periods of lull where you can second-screen — catch up on emails! Work at your actual job! Scroll social media! — interrupted by sudden, heart-stopping feats of athleticism and pure luck. Brazil’s Gabriel Medina had one such moment where he launched off a wave and became the subject of what has to be the coolest photo ever taken. While I’m definitely rooting for Team USA’s Caroline Marks — who delivered a crushing performance on Saturday with scores of 9.43 and 8.50 — and I simply cannot wait for the matchup between Brazilian Tatiana Weston-Webb and Team USA’s Caitlin Simmers, this is one of those sports where the country affiliation barely feels important. When you’re watching people get violently swallowed up by the ocean, and then waiting for them to surface and signal that they are okay, things like flags and anthems feel completely silly. Instead of getting all wrapped up in nationalistic aggression, I’m simply cheering for all the surfers to have fun and not get killed or maimed by an angry sea. Frankly, this is the kind of perspective I think the world could use. —Anne Victoria Clark
Soccer
Thanks to the contributions of (in no particular order) Jason Sudeikis, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, and Lionel Messi, soccer is more popular than ever. I mean here in the United States, of course. We’re finally starting to get onboard with the rest of the world when it comes to the beautiful game, and the rest of the world is noticing. Especially when it comes to our international women’s team, which has been ranked No. 1 since 2008. (Though they were paid far less than the men’s team — current rank No. 16 — until just last year.) But the women of Team USA haven’t won gold in the Olympics since a three-in-a-row winning streak from 2004–2012. Last time around, Canada knocked us out in the semifinals, but it remains to be seen whether we’ll get a rematch since Canada was docked points in the group stage for illegal drone spying and may or may not advance despite winning both of their games so far. The drama! See? Soccer isn’t boring! —Emily Palmer Heller
Basketball
For most of the event’s history — in both the men and women’s competition — Olympic basketball has been a contest between the United States and the field. Not even the biggest skeptic of American exceptionalism could deny the talent gap, which has often been so considerable that U.S. teams often take the opportunity to showboat during games, like the Harlem Globetrotters playing against the hapless Washington Generals. But basketball is becoming an increasingly democratized sport, and the margins are rapidly narrowing. The U.S., with its absurd concentration of star power, remains the overwhelming favorite, but many of the world’s best individual players today represent different countries, and the teams assembled around them tend to play a distinctly international brand of basketball where smart strategy compensates for a lack of pure athleticism. When the U.S. goes unchallenged, the biggest stars in the NBA and WNBA make enough highlight-reel plays to keep the games entertaining. But when other countries give them a run for their money? That’s the stuff classic sports movies are made of. —Hershal Pandya
Diving
I will always stop what I’m doing to watch Olympic diving, but it’s tough to know whether that’s because I love it or because I live in terror that one of the athletes will hit their head on the diving platform and the whole thing will transform into a crime scene. It’s mesmerizing! It’s life-or-death! It’s an absolutely bananas sport, and also one of the few sports where even imagining myself attempting to do it turns my entire digestive tract into gelatin. The big bonus of watching diving once every four years is that, unlike racquetball or fencing, it’s very easy to pretend you know what’s going on. Did they splash a lot? Ooh, that’s not good. —Kathryn VanArendonk
Dressage
Like all the greatest Olympics events, dressage provides a window into a world I had no idea existed and find utterly incomprehensible, but nevertheless become extremely invested in for the short time it’s on, before forgetting about it for four years. Dressage is a sport in which rich people make their horses dance. I assume they’re rich, because no sport has ever looked more for rich people than dressage, which, in addition to the whole horse-having aspect, also requires its participants to kit themselves out in a top hat, breeches, and a swallowtail coat. It’s in this intensely uncomfortable-looking outfit that competitors sit on top of their horses while those horses perform some bouncy choreography to the sound of, say, the Beach Boys or The Lion King. I say “sit†because part of the whole deal of dressage seems to be that the rider is supposed to barely appear to be guiding the horse, making the sport look delightfully like one in which very dressed-up people are slightly embarrassed to be finding their mounts doing a nifty little side-step across the arena. Then the announcers mutter about “elasticity†and “doubling coefficients for the pirouettes,†and then someone, often possessed of a double-barreled last name, wins, and no one knows why. It’s perfect. —Alison Wilmore
Men’s Gymnastics
Simone Biles is at the top of her game; it’s not her fault that happens to be light-years above her competition. The women winning gold was obvious, but the mens’ division played out with all the suspense of a sports drama. Women’s artistic gymnastics is controlled, graceful, and poised, while most of the men’s events are about swinging your body around as hard and as fast as you can. With Brody Malone nursing a 2023 knee injury, this year, the men went into the finals as underdogs. Their only hope was 26-year-old bespectacled Rubik’s Cube–solving pommel-horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik. Backs against the wall, toes pointed, the men managed a medal and, of course, celebrated loudly after every landing. I was personally endeared by the bro handshakes they gave each other once they got off the mat. “Brody, dude, you’re an animal, bro,†is their version of Suni Lee’s “That was fire.†—Zoë Haylock