© Dan Vernon
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games has further demonstrated the global reach of athletics, with a record for the most countries winning gold in a single Games having been set.
A total of 27 countries won athletics gold medals, two more than the previous record figure. Dominica, Pakistan and Saint Lucia all featured on the athletics medal table for the first time, with Thea LaFond (women’s triple jump), Arshad Nadeem (men’s javelin) and Julien Alfred (women’s 100m) all gaining historic gold for their respective nations.
Joining Dominica, Pakistan and Saint Lucia, Botswana also got a maiden athletics title through Letsile Tebogo in the men’s 200m – the nation’s first Olympic title in any sport – taking the total number of countries who have ever won an Olympic athletics medal to 105.
The tally of 43 countries on the medal table in Paris matches Tokyo as the biggest in athletics for more than 20 years, while 75 countries finished in the top eight – showcasing the depth of talent in the sport.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe thanked the Paris 2024 organising committee for providing the stage on which the sport and its stars could shine.
“Paris 2024 has been an absolutely spectacular Olympic Games for athletics,” said Coe.
“We are a sport where numbers matter on and off the field of play. Over the course of the last 11 days, our athletes have dazzled audiences in Paris and across the globe with some performances for the ages. We had three world records, 13 Olympic records and countless national and area records – the performances were nothing short of outstanding.
“Our sport is the gift that keeps on giving. This is not a one off,” added Coe. “We saw similar scenes at the World Championships in Budapest last year – and we are already seeing tickets fly off the shelves for Tokyo (2025 World Championships).”
A total of 26 athletes won multiple medals in Paris, including Femke Bol (mixed 4x400m gold, women’s 4x400m silver, women’s 400m hurdles bronze), her Dutch teammate Sifan Hassan (women’s marathon gold, 5000m and 10,000m bronze) and USA’s Gabby Thomas (women’s 200m, 4x100m and 4x400m gold).
Following his run for the US men’s 4x400m team in the heats, 16-year-old Quincy Wilson became the youngest ever men’s Olympic gold medallist in athletics.
Paris 2024 was also the highest quality Olympic Games in history, according to competition performance rankings:
Edition Score
Paris 2024 198,320
Tokyo 2020 197,115
Rio 2016 195,953
London 2012 192,456
Beijing 2008 191,749
Athens 2004 190,871
Records set
3 world records: Mondo Duplantis (SWE), 6.25m in the pole vault; Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (USA), 50.37 in the 400m hurdles; USA, 3:07.41 in the mixed 4x400m.
13 Olympic records, 2 Olympic decathlon best performances, 21 area records, 99 national records, 311 personal bests.
Off the field of play, more than one million tickets were sold to athletics events – the highest number ever for the sport at an Olympic Games.
Media reach
• More than one million articles
• Two trillion potential reach
• Top 10 countries:
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Germany
5. Italy
6. Brazil
7. France
8. India
9. China
10. Spain
Website figures
• With more than 15 million web page impressions in the last 10 days, World Athletics website traffic has increased by more than 40% compared to the last Games in Tokyo. This represents 25% of what the website would experience during World Championships as, in the case of the Olympics, results are primarily covered by Paris 2024 apps and websites.
• 12,000 fans played Predict the Podium in the last two weeks.
• Offering fans specialised live results and athletics prediction gaming largely contributed to an increase of recorded fan profiles by 13,000, taking the total close to 900,000 known fans.
• 88% of national Olympic committees adopted World Athletics’ virtual technical information centre for final confirmations, protests and other services.
• More than 55,000 results related data points were processed in World Athletics systems.
• More than 140 professionals used the World Athletics Web Competition Information System service, despite the availability of Paris 2024 official tools.
Social media stats
• 543,000 new followers
• More than 1200 posts
• 42 million views
• 217 million impressions
• 12.5 million engagements
• More than 11,000 photos by three official World Athletics photographers
World Athletics
Shuaeeb Is a seasoned sportswriter, social worker, and philanthropist. He has been renowned for his support of disabled sports persons and championing for equal rights and opportunities for all sports persons. He is also a father of 4 children and married to His partner Moana who is of Australian descent. He currently does sports volunteering and disability support work aside from writing for this August media.
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