The Olympics — Sports & Athletes
Thanks for joining us!
This episode was written by Kara and voiced by Kara and T.
Episode art was drawn by Jean.
It was originally released in July 2024.
— Check out these books about athletes —
Click on each photo for a link to the book on our Bookshop.org account
— Make your own medals —
Materials
Cardboard or card stock
Paper for number drawing
Ribbon
Tin foil or any kind of metallic paper
Glue & tape
Crayons and/or drawing materials
Cut a circle in your card stock and metallic paper.
Glue the metallic paper to the card stock.
Draw out your numbers for the middle of your medals.
Cut out your number and glue or tape it on top of the metallic side.
Decorate your medals in any way you’d like!
Tape the ribbon to the back.
Wear with the pride of an Olympian who has achieved their dreams!
— The Olympics: Sports & Athletes Episode Summary —
We get to watch so many different kinds of sports at the Olympics! —
There are sports that we may see more often, like basketball, swimming, running. And there are many that we don’t get to see, especially on TV, like beach volleyball, diving, fencing, equestrian, judo, table tennis, and so many more!
There are different sports in the Summer and Winter Olympics. We switch between those every 2 years, so the Summer Olympics are actually every 4 years!
This year, Paris is the host city, and they’ve chosen to add the sport breaking, also known as break dancing. In it, 16 men (called B-Boys) and 16 women (called B-girls) will compete.
There are over 30 sports happening at the 2024 Olympics. We list them all in the episode, and you can see a list of them on the Olympics website.
There can be lots of competitions within each sport —
To be able to compete at the Olympics, athletes had to compete to qualify to get there. They had to do their sport beforehand, to see who was the best of the best.
Every athlete who is at the Olympics gets to play their sport, AND is part of their country’s team!
There are events in some sports. It’s not just one swimming competition, and ok! All done! There are
In some sports, people compete on their own. Golfing, skateboarding, running, fencing – in these, people play on their own. These can also be known as individual sports.
Some sports require teams of people, like soccer, rugby, basketball, water polo. The teammates all play together.
Sometimes there are duos, pairs – just 2 people – who compete together. Synchronized diving, beach volleyball, and pairs tennis all have two people on a mini-team.
And then! There can be times when athletes compete together for just that event! Like relay races and swims.
To figure out who wins, sometimes it’s whoever is the fastest, or throws the farthest, or lifts the most. But other times there are scores. People do tricks or routines, and judges give them points for their skills. Depending on how well they do, and how hard their skills are, they get more points. Add the points up, and you see who wins!
It’s fun to cheer people on! —
T and I are really excited to watch Simone Biles! She is probably the best gymnast of all time, one of the best athletes ever. She’s already been to two other Olympics games, and has won her gymnastics event four times, giving her 4 Olympic gold medals. She jumps very high and can do amazing twists through the air. She’s strong and believes in herself, you have to believe in yourself when you’re doing these hard, amazing things! But in the last Olympics, she had an experience where she got nervous, and she didn’t trust that she could do her tricks, so she stopped competing. Which, I think, makes her even more incredible, because she listened to her body and her mind and knew when to take a break. And now we get to watch her again, in probably her last Olympics.
Athletes can be all different ages – there are some in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s!
The youngest athlete in the 2024 Olympics is Zheng Haohao, a skateboarder from China, will be 11 years old when she competes in Paris. The youngest member of Team USA in the Olympics is Hezly Rivera, who is 16 years old.
No matter how old people are when they get to the Olympics, a lot of athletes started their sport when they were kids. Carisa Moore, is an American surfer who won the first ever gold medal in surfing. She’s 31 now, but she started surfing when she was 5, in Honolulu, Hawaii, with her dad. Sky Brown, a skateboarder from Great Britain, started skating when she was 4! And competing at age 8! Australian breaker Jeff Dunne aka ‘J-Attack’ first discovered his skills as a seven-year-old in his older sister’s hip-hop dance class.
Katie Ledecky is an American swimmer. This is her 4th Olympics and she’s already won 7 gold medals - she won her first when she was just 15! She’s an Olympic champion at every swimming distance from the short 200 meters to the looong 1500 meters.
The American men’s basketball team is a group of men who usually play against each other on different teams in the NBA. In the Olympics, they’re coming together to play on one team. And that team includes some of the very best players EVER, like Steph Curry and LeBron James. And LeBron James had the honor of being one Team USA’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is a runner from Jamaica and one of the greatest sprinters of all time. This is her fifth and last Olympics! She’ll compete in the 100m sprint, where they run a short distance incredibly fast. She’ll be running against the incredibly fast Shericka Jackson (who’s also from Jamaica) and American Sha’Carri Richardson.
Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge is already one of best marathon runners ever. This year, he’s trying to win the Olympic marathon again, making it 3 different Olympic marathon wins, which has never been done before!
Quan Hongchan is a diving star from China. She started to train in diving at age 7 and won a gold medal at the last Olympics when she was just 14! Will she win any more this year?
Mijaín López Núñez is a wrestler from Cuba. This is is FIFTH Olympics. He’s won his wrestling event 4 times and is trying for a 5th, which would be a record – no one has ever gotten gold in the same event at five olympics in a row!
Olympic winners receive medals —
First place winners receive gold medals, second place get silver, third place get bronze. If a team of athletes wins, they all receive medals.
Each Olympic host creates their own unique medal. Because the 2024 host is Paris, the medals each have a piece of metal (iron) from the Eiffel Tower. In the center is a hexagon and there are lines that go out from it, giving it a radiance and sparkle.
It is really fun to get medals. But even if athletes don’t win a medal, they’ve done something incredible. Everyone who qualified for the Olympics was the best of the best. They practiced really hard, for many years, and became as good as they could possibly be.
And it reminds us why the Olympic motto is: “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”.