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Alyssa Roenigk, ESPN Senior Writer
Simone Biles! Seine party! Clay tennis! The Paris Olympics promises it all. From a marathon start at the Hotel de Ville to beach volleyball at the Eiffel Tower, the 2024 Games will showcase the City of Lights as heavily as the athletes. There’s the first opening ceremony — one year from today! — in summer Olympic history to take place outside of a stadium. There’s tennis returning to the red stuff for the first time since Barcelona in 1992. And there’s the potential for a 21-and-over, all-former-Olympian U.S. women’s gymnastics team, more record-smashing by American swimmers and a surf contest taking place 10,000 miles from the Latin Quarter. Fluctuat Nec Mergitur!
Here are six storylines we’re already excited about, 365 days out:
Will Simone Biles be named to a third Olympic team?
WATCH: Women’s gymnastics qualifying rounds, July 28, 2024, Bercy Arena
WARMUP: 2023 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Aug. 24-27, San Jose, California
Biles is back! In June, after months of speculation, the four-time Olympic gold medalist quietly added her name to the list of gymnasts who would compete at the U.S. Classic in Chicago in early August. The meet will be the first time Biles, 26, has competed since taking bronze on balance beam at the 2020 Tokyo Games in August 2021, and her attendance all but assures she will enter the lineup for Championships later in the month.
“I’m overwhelmed with all of your messages, support & love!” Biles wrote in a July 5 post, the only public comment she’s made since announcing her return. “Excited to get back out on the competition floor!” If Biles makes the team, she will represent Team USA in the home country of Cecile and Laurent Landi, her coaches since 2017. Cecile competed in Atlanta as a member of the 1996 French Olympic gymnastics team.
A slew of Biles’ Olympic teammates could join her in Paris. Reigning all-around champion Suni Lee and 2022 team silver medalist Jordan Chiles are leaving their college teams to focus on making their second Olympics. Jade Carey, the 2020 Olympic gold medalist on floor, will attempt to juggle collegiate and elite gymnastics over the next year, as will 2022 U.S. champion Konnor McClain, 18, who is joining LSU in the fall.
Gabby Douglas, the 2012 Olympic all-around champion and Biles’ teammate from the 2016 Rio Games, is also preparing for a return. She posted a video of her training uneven bars in July, but has not yet announced when she will return to competition. If she is named to the team, Douglas will be 28 and the oldest U.S. gymnast to compete at an Olympics since 1952. And don’t forget potential Olympic newcomer Shilese Jones, a member of the U.S. team that took gold at the 2022 World Championships, and the silver medalist on bars and in the all-around.
In Paris, the teams are back to five (start conjuring potential nicknames now) but without individual qualifiers. All this adds up to the 2024 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team being the toughest in history to make.
Will Katie Ledecky clean up again?
WATCH: Ledecky attempts to make it four straight Olympic gold medals in the 800-meter free, Aug. 2, 2024, Aquatics Center
WARMUP: World Aquatics Championships, July 14-30, 2023, Fukuoka, Japan
Would it be an Olympics without the first lady of freestyle? The most decorated woman in her sport’s history, Ledecky is currently competing at Worlds. Although she qualified for four events — the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 free — she opted to skip the 200 to focus on the longer races.
On Tuesday, Ledecky won the 1,500 by 17 seconds to earn her 15th individual win and tie Michael Phelps for the most individual gold medals at Worlds. (And she still has the 800 to race!) Ledecky also owns seven Olympic gold medals dating back to a win in the 800-meter freestyle in London. In Paris, she can make it four straight in the 800 free, a distance at which she is the current world record holder. She swam her third-fastest time ever in the event at Nationals in July (and her best time since 2016) to win yet another national title. Remarkably, at 26, she is as fast as ever.
But it’s the 400 free that promises the most drama next summer. The American record holder in the event, Ledecky faces the other two most recent world record holders, Summer McIntosh of Canada, the 16-year-old who snapped Ledecky’s nine-year win streak in the U.S. in March with a win in the 200-meter freestyle, and Ariarne Titmus of Australia, who beat Ledecky by 3.35 seconds in the 400 at world championships on Sunday while smashing the current world record.
Will an American sprinter finally out-bolt Usain?
WATCH: Round 1 of the men’s 200 meters, Aug. 5, 2024, Stade de France
WARMUP: World Athletics Championships, Aug. 19-27, 2023, Budapest, Hungary
It’s been 14 years since Jamaica’s Usain Bolt sprinted a 19.19 200 meters at the 2009 world championships in Berlin and stretched the limits of human possibility. Now, three American sprinters believe they can cover the distance faster.
Kenny Bednarek, Noah Lyles and Erriyon Knighton, who finished two-three-four in the 200 at the 2020 Olympics [Canadian Andre De Grasse won gold], have each positioned themselves to become Bolt’s heir apparent.
Bednarek, 24, is the reigning world and Olympic silver medalist in the distance, and finished one spot ahead of Lyles in Tokyo and one spot behind him at the 2022 world championships in Eugene, Oregon.
On Tuesday, Lyles, 25, ran a 19.47 at the London Diamond League event to beat Bolt’s record for the most career sub-20-second 200-meter races, with 35. Last August, Lyles won the 200-meter world title in 19.31, besting Michael Johnson’s American record. His time was the third-fastest ever behind Bolt’s 2009 world record and Jamaican Yohan Blake’s 2011 time of 19.26.
But not so fast.
Knighton, 19, finished just .19 seconds behind Lyles in Tokyo, and could outpace both men — and Bolt — in Paris. His goal: Run the first sub-19 200 in history. He could do it. The under-18 and under-20 world record holder in the distance already owns 11 of the top-12 junior 200 times.
A question of equal import: Which of these men has a post-world-record pose to rival the Lightning Bolt?
Will surfing avoid a sophomore slump?
WATCH: R1 of men’s and women’s surfing, July 27, 2024, Tahiti
WARMUP: World Surf League Tahiti Pro, Aug. 11-20, 2023
Before surfing’s Olympic debut in Tokyo, 10-time WSL champion Kelly Slater made a pitch to hold the contest on a man-made wave — one he invented — to ensure consistent, world-class waves worthy of the sport’s top surfers. Tokyo’s organizing committee voted instead to hold the contest in the ocean, at Tsurigasaki Beach in Chiba, a break known for its small summer swells. As predicted, the 2020 contest (held in July 2021) took place in choppy, unpredictable surf. American Carissa Moore, currently the No. 1-ranked surfer in the world, and Brazilian Italo Ferreira, captured surfing’s first Olympic gold medals, and the debate about whether to contest Olympic surfing in a wave pool was punted to Paris.
But in March 2020, the IOC one-upped Slater’s pitch and approved holding the 2024 event on the Polynesian island of Tahiti (instead of at Hossegor or Biarritz in the south of France). The island is home to one of the most iconic waves in the world: Teahupo’o, a heavy left-hander located nearly 10,000 miles from the Olympic host city and known as “The End of the Road.” Late July should deliver a big south swell and an exciting contest.
Until last August, few women in the running for Olympic spots had competed at Teahupo’o, a location absent from the women’s world tour for nearly two decades. This summer’s contest, August 11-20, is the last time the men and women will compete there before the Paris Games.
Moore and 21-year-old Caroline Marks, her 2020 teammate, are the WSL’s top-ranked U.S. women. They are likely to qualify for their second Olympic teams and be joined on Team USA by current world No. 3 Griffin Colapinto and 2020 Olympian John John Florence. All four hold their own in big waves, but Tahitian surfers Kauli Vaast and Vahine Fierro, who secured their Olympic spots at the ISA World Surfing Games in June, will be the favorites to take gold at their home break.
Can France end Team USA’s basketball streak?
WATCH: Match play begins, July 27, 2024, Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Lille, France
WARMUP: 2023 FIBA World Cup, August 25-Sept. 10, Philippines, Japan, Indonesia
Parisian superstar Victor Wembanyama returns home to anchor a French team that includes NBA talents Rudy Gobert and Evan Fournier. But even with the 7’5″ teen at center — he’ll be 20 by next summer — the home team will have its hands full with Steve Kerr’s group of American All-Stars.
This rivalry has history. After winning a 15th Olympic gold medal in Rio in 2016, Team USA lost to France in the quarterfinals of the 2019 FIBA World Cup and finished seventh overall in the tournament. The next time they faced one another, at the 2020 Tokyo Games in the summer of 2021, the U.S. defeated France 87-82 in the final to win their 16th gold. Team USA has not lost an Olympic tournament since 2004, but the world has caught up.
Wembanyama has said he will not play for France at this summer’s FIBA World Cup, choosing instead to work out and prepare for his rookie season with the Spurs — who drafted him No. 1 overall in June — and the Paris Games. He doesn’t sound like a guy who’s ready to let France settle for silver again.
Will breaking be a breakout sport?
WATCH: Women’s qualifying and final, Aug. 9, 2024, Le Concorde
WARMUP: Red Bull BC One World final, Oct. 21, 2023, Stade Roland-Garros, Paris
The Olympics’ newest add, breaking, lives at the heart of the question, “What defines a sport?” And, perhaps more relevant here, “Can art be judged?”
Born of hip-hop and Black American culture, break dancing, as it’s more widely known, is a fast-paced, acrobatic artform that showcases a dancer’s athleticism, musicality, creativity and ability to think quickly on their feet (or head!). It is a joy to watch, but its addition to the Paris program in December 2020, as part of a larger Olympic movement to attract younger viewers, surprised even the country’s top B-Girls and B-Boys.
“My personal reaction was like, ‘No way. That’s not happening,'” Grace “Sunny” Choi, told Team USA in May. “To me, breaking was too underground, too street to be something that would be performed at an event that was as polished as the Olympics.”
Choi, who goes by “B-Girl Sunny” when she competes, is a former gymnast who represented the U.S. at October’s BC One World Final in New York City, where she lives. A favorite to make the U.S. team next summer, Choi, 34, took silver in the B-Girls competition at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham last July and said breaking’s transition to Olympic sport has had a beneficial side-effect: a boost in participation.
In its Olympic form, breaking features solo head-to-head battles — and the best nicknames in sports. The routines are largely improvised. Dancers say only about 20 to 40 percent of their moves are premeditated. The rest is in-the-moment flow. In this way, breaking is more like skateboarding than gymnastics, but guided by a DJ instead of course design.
And speaking of skateboarding, it’s back, too. Breaking is the only first-time sport in Paris, but it joins surfing, park and street skateboarding and sport climbing, which debuted in Tokyo. Will breaking return in 2028? That decision will have little to do with how it’s defined and a lot to do with ratings.