Kaylia Nemour of Algeria delivered the country's first gold medal in gymnastics, putting together a thrilling routine in the uneven bars final on Sunday to edge Qiu Qiyuan of China.
Sunisa Lee of the U.S. picked up her third medal in Paris and sixth of her Olympic career by grabbing bronze, exactly where she finished in Tokyo three years ago.
Nemour is French and still trains in France but switched to compete for Algeria following a dispute with the French gymnastics federation and Nemour's club of Avoine Beaumont, which has led the gymnast to embrace her father's Algerian nationality.
The 17-year-old is a wonder on bars, swooping from one to the other with a series of releases and intricate hand maneuvers that are both athletically and technically demanding.
.webp)
.webp)
Nemour needed to rely on all those skills to edge Qiu, who put on a clinic during her set. Her legs were practically magnetized together during her routine and she was so straight on her handstand she looked like a ruler. Qiu hugged her coaches after her dismount and the crowd erupted when her 15.5 was posted.
Nemour scored 15.700
While Nemour competes under a different flag - she draped the Algerian banner behind her after clinching her victory - she is very much on home soil. A raucous ovation followed after she won the first-ever gymnastics medal for Algeria.
Lee has spent much of the last 15 months dealing with multiple kidney diseases that have limited her training. She didn't really get serious about Paris until December. And seven months later she's already picked up three medals after helping the Simone Biles-led U.S. women claim team gold last Tuesday. Lee followed it up two days later with a bronze in the all-around behind Biles and Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.
Lee's six medals leave her one behind Shannon Miller for the second most by an American gymnast. Lee could match Miller in the balance beam final on Sunday.
Liu grabs gold again
Liu Yang of China defended his Olympic gymnastics title on still rings, posting a score of 15.300 to edge teammate Zou Jingyuan in the finals.
The 29-year-old Liu is the third man to win multiple Olympic titles in an event that requires strength and impeccable body control, joining Albert Azaryan of Russia and Akinori Nakayama of Japan.
Eleftherios Petrounias of Greece earned the bronze. Petrounias has won a medal on rings in three straight Games. He was the champion in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and a bronze medalist in Tokyo three years ago.
The difference between Liu's 15.300 and Zou's 15.233 came on the dismount. Zou hopped a couple of times after hitting the mat while Liu's bounce was considerably smaller.
Samir Ait Said of France finished fourth, eight years after memorably breaking his left leg on a vault in Rio. Said, who has already committed to making it to Los Angeles 2028, roared after his dismount in front of a highly partisan crowd inside Bercy Arena. The crowd met Said's score of 15.000 with whistles of displeasure.
Every four years, the greatest athletes in the world come together to compete at the highest possible level their sport has to offer: the Olympics. Representing 206 countries, thousands of athletes from soccer players to javelin throwers to skateboarders pour into the Games' host city ready to compete for the gold, follow their dreams, and, apparently, have sex.
It's not exactly a secret that athletes in the Olympic Village are horny — in fact, they've admitted it themselves. Soccer player Hope Solo told ESPN in 2012 that "there's a lot of sex going on" at the Olympics. Josh Lakatos, a US trap shooter, even revealed that he's "never witnessed so much debauchery in [his] entire life," while swimmer Ryan Lochte added that he'd guess around 70 to 75 percent of Olympians partake in between-the-sheets activities. "Hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do," he said.
While the Olympic Games are thousands of years old, the infamous Olympic Village has only been around for 100 years — but the lore of what goes on inside the private, athletes-only residence halls runs deep. It's been said in GQ that someone once "woke up in the village one morning with nothing but a baguette on," and even Grindr allegedly crashed during the 2012 Games in London, according to The Daily Mirror.
And we get it: these athletes are young, hot, amped up on pre-competition energy, and obviously at their athletic peak, meaning that getting down and dirty in the Village is pretty much unavoidable. Psychology professor Kelly Campbell, PhD, thinks so. She spent the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver interviewing Olympians inside the Village and studying the effects that love and romance have on athletic performance. Based on her interactions, Dr. Campbell says that the athletes (at least, some of them) are definitely having sex.
"You can attribute it to a lot of things. If you think about who's there, it's people who are relatively matched in age, they're all extremely physically fit, they have these characteristics that are already going to create this heightened environment," she tells PS.
She also interviewed people who worked in the Olympic Village, including cafeteria and food delivery workers to get the inside scoop. "As the Games progress and people are there longer, [the workers said] you start to see these little partnerships happening," she says.
Before attending the 2020 Tokyo Games (which were held in 2021 due to the pandemic), Ali Gibson, a basketball player representing Puerto Rico, tells PS that finding out what goes on in the Village was one of the things she was most looking forward to — besides competing, of course. "The Village is everything," she says. "Everyone's talking about how all of the athletes are going to interact and be around each other, so that was definitely something I was looking forward to."
After attending the Games, Gibson says that most athletes are super focused on competing — that is, until their event ends. "They let loose after that," she says.
Like, really let loose, according to Viktoria*, a Tokyo 2020 Olympic athlete who requested anonymity. "By the time my competition was over, I had only one thing on my mind — to hook up and release this pent-up energy," she tells PS. "It's crazy in the Village. Athletes download Tinder just for those two weeks and set their location to the few [miles] radius of the Olympic Village, and both men and women are always on the lookout for a good catch."
"Another mini Olympics is happening — the hookup Olympics."
"Amongst your closest friends in your team, another mini Olympics is happening — the hookup Olympics," she adds. In that iteration of the games, some events consisted of who could kiss the most people in one night, who could get a gold medalist into bed, and who could find out which sports team had the best performance off the field — and in the bedroom. "It's the most fun ever," she says.
"Because the Olympics comes around only once every four years, you almost feel like this is your one moment to go all in and experience the craziness," Viktoria adds. "We would have parties every night once we were done with the competition and I would always end up with someone new. It's definitely one of the craziest experiences of my life."
Both Viktoria and Gibson's first Olympics was Tokyo 2020, which came with a new rule: no leaving the Village. "Usually what happens is athletes throw parties," Gibson says. "[They] rent out penthouses or whatever and throw parties around town at restaurants at night, but you couldn't leave the Village because of COVID unless you were going to a game or practice, so all of the parties had to be handled in the Village."
And no, those "anti-sex beds" (which were debunked) didn't stop the athletes from fornicating, either. Viktoria says being forced to stay in one place made the athlete's quarters feel like the "Love Island" villa. "There was definitely still intimacy happening throughout that Village, for sure," Gibson says.
On what surprised her most during her time in the Village, Viktoria recalls, "Some athletes who are married or in committed long-term relationships decide that the rules don't apply in the Village." She adds, "Not all of them, but some. My friends and I always made sure we did a few background social media checks on the athletes to make sure we weren't hooking up with married athletes."
"People go wild. Australia always has the best parties after, and so does Great Britain," says Hannah*, a five-time paralympic swimmer who requested anonymity. "It's wild. You don't think that everyone is hooking up, but everyone is literally hooking up. And you come to find out after the Games that some people were hooking up with multiple people."
While Hannah says she didn't partake in the frenzy of Olympic hookups, she did get to bring in her boyfriend (now husband) to do the deed. "It was fun to bring [him] into the Village just to say I did that in the Village," she says.
While there are athletes who certainly have sex at the Olympics, the happenings in the Village aren't as salacious and scandalous as the media makes them seem. There are definitely opportunities to let your freak flag fly like Viktoria says, but that's not the reality for what appears to be the majority of athletes. "It's not that crazy," Kyra Condie, a US climber, tells PS. "My expectations were that it was going to be totally insane, and I think, depending on how involved you are in it, it's not that crazy. I'm not walking around a corner and seeing people hook up."
The intrigue we have about the Olympic Village may have erupted into the obsession that it is today back when the condom program was first introduced in 1988. Although the aim was to bring awareness to HIV and AIDS, instead, the public became more interested in whether or not those thousands (and thousands!) of condoms were actually being used. And while there isn't a way to figure out exactly how many condoms end up in the trash, the 2000 Sydney Games had to have 20,000 extra condoms shuttled in after the first 50,000 wasn't enough. Now, 300,000 rubbers — along with packets of lube — are being sent to the Paris 2024 Games.
Sex, in general, is a topic that's both taboo and a significant part of our everyday culture. "Americans have a very strange relationship with sex," Dr. Campbell says. "We shouldn't talk too much about it in school, but yet we can use it to sell hamburgers and plaster it all over billboards. It's partly that dichotomy that makes it interesting because it wouldn't be as interesting if it weren't secretive."
But it's also the fact that we, the public, don't know what goes on in the Olympic Village that makes its intrigue all the more intense. "We see in the public what's going on with their sport, but we don't see anything else," Dr. Campbell says. "Everyone's wondering, what about the rest? We don't have that lens, it's private, so people are going to have an interest in it."
"What I'd like the public to understand is that when you're in an elite, high-performance sport, there's many days, weeks, and months of the year when we're separated from normal life and everyday society," Viktoria says. "When you're in the competitive season, you don't get to meet anyone new or have a normal social life. For us, being in the Olympic Village is like having all of those missed-out opportunities concentrated into two weeks. It's not like we're doing anything out of the ordinary!"
Speaking to PS before heading to Paris, Viktoria says she's excited for what's to come. "Who knows," she says. "I might meet someone when I'm there."
For all of his Grand Slam championships and other titles, for all of his time at No. 1, Novak Djokovic really, really wanted an Olympic gold medal for Serbia, the last significant accomplishment missing from his glittering resume.
He finally got one at age 37. Doesn’t matter a bit how long it took. Djokovic beat Carlos Alcaraz 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) in an enthralling and evenly matched men’s tennis singles final at the 2024 Games on Sunday.
“I put my heart, my soul, my body, my family — my everything — on the line to win Olympic gold,” Djokovic said. “Incredible battle. Incredible fight.”
His impressive career already featured a men’s-record 24 Grand Slam trophies and the most weeks spent atop the rankings by any man or woman. It also already contained a Summer Olympics medal, from 2008, but it was a bronze — and he made it clear that simply wasn’t sufficient.
Until he got past bronze medalist Lorenzo Musetti of Italy in the semifinals Friday, Djokovic was 0-3 in that round at the Games. He lost to the eventual gold winner each time: Rafael Nadal at Beijing in 2008, Andy Murray at London in 2012, and Alexander Zverev in Tokyo three years ago.
Before facing Musetti, Djokovic said, “I was like, ‘OK, let’s get through this one.’ That’s why today, before the match, I did not feel as nervous as I would normally feel because I had secured a medal.”
In Paris, wearing a gray sleeve over the right knee that required surgery for a torn meniscus two months ago, Djokovic faced Nadal in the second round and eliminated his longtime rival in straight sets. Now Djokovic is the oldest man to win the singles gold in his sport since 1908 — and prevented Spain’s Alcaraz, who is 21, from becoming the youngest.
When the victory was his, when the gold was his, thanks to one last forehand winner, Djokovic turned toward his team in the stands — sitting in front of his wife and their two children — dropped his racket and knelt on the clay. As emotional as ever, he cried and covered his face, then rose and grabbed a red-white-and-blue Serbian flag.
After hugs in the stands, Djokovic waved that flag.
“In the tough moments, he gave it an extra push,” silver medalist Alcaraz said through his own tears. “It hurts to lose like this.”
The final, which lasted 2 hours, and 50 minutes despite being decided in only two sets, was a rematch of the Wimbledon title match three weeks ago that Alcaraz won to follow up his French Open title in June.
Alcaraz also defeated Djokovic in last year’s final at the All England Club, but Djokovic won when they met in the semifinals of the 2023 French Open, the annual clay-court tournament held at Roland Garros, the site used for tennis during these Olympics.
Sunday’s contest was an enthralling matchup, featuring one of the best to ever do it in Djokovic, and the best at the moment in Alcaraz. Indeed, could have been frustrating for Djokovic to find himself once again across the net from a younger, speedier version of himself. Maybe that’s why Djokovic frequently looked up and gesticulated and muttered toward his guest box.
Still, he came out on top.
“Honestly, when the last shot went through him, past him, that was the only moment I actually thought I could win the match,” Djokovic said.
It required long exchanges filled with superb ball-striking, deft drop shots — Alcaraz’s tended to be more successful, sometimes so good Djokovic declined to even give chase — and tremendous sprinting, sliding, stretching defense at both ends. They served so well that neither got broken even once: Djokovic saved eight break points, Alcaraz six.
Most remarkable, perhaps, was how cleanly both men played, despite the talent of the opposition and the pressure of the occasion.
The only shame, perhaps, for the fans — and, naturally, Alcaraz — was that the Olympics uses a best-of-three-set format, instead of the best-of-five at Grand Slam tournaments. Make no mistake, this encounter between the No. 1-seeded Djokovic and No. 2-seeded Alcaraz was worthy of a major final.
Those in the stands became part of the show, repeatedly breaking out into choruses of “No-le! No-le!” or “Car-los! Car-los!” that often overlapped, creating an operatic fugue. In the second set, as Alcaraz attempted to mount a comeback, his supporters began chanting, “Si, se puede!” (essentially, “Yes, you can!”) while shaking their red-and-yellow flags. Chair umpire Damien Dumusois occasionally reminded folks to remain silent during the action.
Yet the place also became as quiet as a theater between points, enough so that play was delayed briefly when the air thick with anticipation was pierced by a young child’s crying.
Both men played to the crowd. When Alcaraz raced to reach one drop shot and deposit it over the net for a winner, he basked in the raucous reaction by pointing his right index finger to his ear. When Djokovic laced a cross-court forehand winner on the run to cap a 10-shot point to lead 3-2 in the second tiebreaker, he waved both arms overhead to encourage folks who already were standing and screaming.
The first set alone lasted more than 1 1/2 hours, full of epic shots and epic games. One lasted 18 points spread over more than a dozen mesmerizing minutes, including five break chances for Alcaraz, before Djokovic managed to hold for a 5-4 lead. In the tiebreaker, Djokovic was superior in crunch time, as he so often is, taking the last four points.
At 3-all, Alcaraz delivered a body serve, but Djokovic slid just enough to his left to smack a cross-court forehand return winner. After two mistakes by Alcaraz, Djokovic produced a volley-winner and turned to face his family with a fist held high.
Another set, and another tiebreaker, later, and Djokovic had that medal that he wanted, at long last.
When the Serbian national anthem finished ringing out at Court Philippe Chatrier, Djokovic reached for that gold and brought it to his lips for a kiss.