There have been tons of moments to recollect from Paris 2024, however one factor that caught out to us? Girls athletes have been doing a little actually wonderful issues at these Video games. Living proof: Out of the 126 whole Olympic medals gained by Staff USA athletes, greater than half of them—67—have been earned by feminine athletes. In actual fact, that quantity would have positioned them third amongst all international locations within the medal desk.
What’s extra, Staff USA, the most important group to compete, despatched extra girls than males to the Olympics for the fourth consecutive Video games (315 girls in comparison with 279), in line with Census.gov.
And it wasn’t simply with Staff USA athletes, both. Main as much as this 12 months’s Video games, the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) made a concerted effort to attain gender parity by rising the variety of gender-equal and mixed-gender occasions (together with combined relays in observe and swimming). In keeping with the IOC, this 12 months marked the primary video games with equal numbers of female and male individuals.
Tons of of feminine athletes from around the globe confirmed gorgeous velocity, energy, ability, and extra on the world stage. Listed below are simply 10 of the methods girls made historical past on the Paris Video games.
1. Lauren Scruggs turns into the primary Black American medalist in girls’s particular person fencing.
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Staff USA’s Lauren Scruggs, a 21-year-old Harvard scholar, broke obstacles with a silver-medal end in particular person foil in Paris. “Rising up in fencing, nobody actually appeared like me,” she mentioned in an interview with ABC Information. “My success has helped break stereotypes about what Black individuals can do and who is usually a fencer.” Scruggs additionally teaches fencing to underrepresented children by the Peter Westbrook Basis and mentioned, “I am not simply fencing for myself, however I am fencing for the youngsters again house too.”
