There have been tons of moments to recollect from Paris 2024, however one factor that caught out to us? Girls athletes have been performing some actually superb issues at these Video games. Working example: Out of the 126 whole Olympic medals received by Group USA athletes, greater than half of them—67—have been earned by feminine athletes. In reality, that quantity would have positioned them third amongst all international locations within the medal desk.
What’s extra, Group USA, the biggest staff to compete, despatched extra girls than males to the Olympics for the fourth consecutive Video games (315 girls in comparison with 279), in accordance with Census.gov.
And it wasn’t simply with Group USA athletes, both. Main as much as this yr’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 yr marked the primary video games with equal numbers of female and male contributors.
A whole lot of feminine athletes from world wide confirmed beautiful pace, 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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Group USA’s Lauren Scruggs, a 21-year-old Harvard pupil, broke limitations with a silver-medal end in particular person foil in Paris. “Rising up in fencing, nobody actually regarded like me,” she mentioned in an interview with ABC Information. “My success has helped break stereotypes about what Black individuals can do and who generally is a fencer.” Scruggs additionally teaches fencing to underrepresented youngsters by means of the Peter Westbrook Basis and mentioned, “I am not simply fencing for myself, however I am fencing for the children again house too.”
