On the last night in the Olympic stadium, everything’s a highlight. Every event is a final, that’s more than half of it. But each event is further tinged in the sentimental hue that this is closing night.
Eat, drink, and be merry, because we won’t see the likes of this again for another four years.
Even making such allowances, the last night of full athletic competition in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was a barnstormer, encapsulating almost every element that had made the previous days of competition so compelling.
Creating Olympic history? That would be Faith Kipyegon with a third consecutive win in the 1500 metres, an unprecedented feat in middle-distance events. Field events lasting the whole night through? The men’s high jump kicked off the program and concluded, after a jump-off won by New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr, just minutes before the track events finished with the 4×400 relays. Nail-bitingly close finishes – the three medallists in the women’s 100 hurdles were separated by just 0.02 seconds, Masai Russell winning with the best throw at the finish.
Incandescent brilliance? Even closer between first and second than the hurdles was the 800 metres won by Emmanuel Wanyonyi by a hundredth of a second from Marcus Arop, the pair now third and fourth on the all-time list. The men’s 800 has exploded in the last few months with a slew of times now threatening David Rudisha’s other-worldly world record 1:40.91 at the London 2012 Olympics.
Redemption runs. Well, if we accept they had any need for redemption in the first place, Kipyegon again, beaten in the 5000 metres by teammate Beatrice Chebet, bouncing back to win. Jakob Ingebrigtsen, sensationally out of the medals in the men’s 1500, winning the 5000. Or Femke Bol anchoring Netherlands to a silver medal in the 4×400 (the winning USA team was in another race!) as redemption for a disappointing bronze medal in the 400 hurdles.
The day started with the men’s marathon, run on a course variously described as “brutal”, or “a monster”, with long climbs and a precipitous (by big city marathon standards) descent back down into the centre of Paris. A race won by Eugene 2022 world champion Tamirat Tola that also saw the demise of marathon great Eliud Kipchoge and all-round distance great Kenenisa Bekele.
And behind the great Kipyegon, the Australian highlight. Jess Hull, who chased Kipyegon home in her 1500 world record in Paris just before the Games, chased her home again to take a magnificent silver medal. Brilliant. Unprecedented by an Australian female 1500 athlete. Bloody beaut all-round, actually.
The women’s middle- and long-distance races at these Games have been uniformly outstanding and dramatic. Kipyegon risked compromising her chances of a third 1500 gold medal on the trot by doubling in the 5000 which was on first. She lost there, beaten by Chebet, and also got put on a yellow card after her clash with Gudaf Tsegay coming up to the bell.
Tsegay was also in the 1500 final, having run the 10,000 metres one day earlier between the 1500 semis and final. With 3:50.30 credentials of her own in the shorter event, Tsegay set out to be the spoiler again, blasting out a 59.23 opening lap. It couldn’t last; it didn’t last. Caught by 800 (2:03.27), passed in the third lap (3:07.10 at 1200), Tsegay sank back to twelfth and last place.
Kipyegon disposed of her other challengers up the final straight to win in an Olympic record 3:51.29. Behind her it was Hull chasing hardest off the bend and the Australian held on to second in 3:52.56 ahead of a charging Georgia Bell (3:52.61) and Diribe Welteji (3:52.75) as second to sixth all ran personal bests.
Jenny Orr finished eighth when the 1500 was added to the Olympic program in Munich in 1972; Margaret Crowley was fifth in Atlanta 24 years later; Linden Hall and Hull were sixth and eleventh in Tokyo. But this was the first Olympic 1500 medal by an Australian female athlete.
The men’s 800 was equally dramatic even with Wanyonyi leading practically every step of the way. He took the bell in 50.3, with Arop and this year’s undefeated man Djamel Sedjati lurking ominously in a bunched field. Arop launched his challenge along the back-straight, Sedjati swung out to challenge off the final bend. But Wanyonyi would not be denied, wining by centimetres from Arop – 1:41.19 to 1:41.20, with Sedjati third in 1:41.50.
Suddenly 1:41 clockings are everywhere. Wanyonyi started the charge when he won the Kenyan trial in 1:41.70 on 15 June. That was the first of no less than eleven 1:41 performances of the 26 ever run. The four sub-1:42 performances in the Paris final is the most ever. Will the Olympic final represent peak-2024 or will Rudisha’s record go down in the post-Olympic racing. Stay tuned.
There had been drama enough in the high jump qualifying, with both men who shared the Tokyo gold medal – Mutaz Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi – struggling with injury (Barshim) or illness (Tamberi). Yet here they were in the final. Tamberi went out at 2.27, missing five of his six jumps at 2.22 and that height, but Barshim went all the way to the end, taking the bronze medal at 2.34 and taking one attempt at wining at 2.38.
Kerr and Shelby McEwen were tied at 2.36, each having had two earlier misses. No agreed sharing this time, they went to a jump-off. Both missed at one more attempt at 2.38. Neither could clear 2.36 either. But Kerr slithered over at 2.34, here McEwen missed again, and New Zealand had a gold medal in the high jump.
Pretty well everyone looked like winning the women’s 100 hurdles at some stage of the race. Nadine Visser and Grace Stark were out of the blocks like rockets, but it was Russell, local hero Cyrena Samba-Mayela and defending champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn dominating the closing stages. It came down to the line, where the smaller Russell had a slim 0.01 margin over Samba-Mayela, 12.33 to 12.34, with Camacho-Quinn third in 12.36.
Ingebrigtsen put his 1500 loss behind him with a commanding win in the 5000, running away from his rivals in the final lap to win 13:13.66 from Ronald Kwemoi and Grant Fisher. Stewie McSweyn finished in eighteenth place.
If there was a ‘boring’ event on this night of thrills it was possibly the women’s javelin where Japan’s Haruka Kitaguchi threw 65.80 in the first round to win by almost two metres from Jo-Ann Van Dyk and Nikola Ogrodnikova.
World championship bronze medallist Mackenzie Little had a night to forget, opening with her best effort of 60.32 which was not far enough to get into the top eight.
Kathryn Mitchell finished seventh with 62.63, a massive effort from a thrower who had the devastating experience at the world championships of making the final but being unable to compete because of injury.
Mitchell, the 2018 Commonwealth champion, has been top eight at five global championships, eighth, sixth, sixth and now seventh at four Olympics and fifth in a world championship. She turned 42 on 10 July. So, on Olympic marathon day she is not quite 42.195 years old, but it’s been a magnificent marathon career.
Speaking of marathons, Tamirat Tola, the Eugene 2022 world champion, broke away on the tough climb throughout the 29th kilometre and then held his lead all the way to the line to win in 2:06:26, eclipsing the late Sammy Wanjiru’s Olympic record.
Bashir Abdi took his second Olympic minor medal, silver this time, in 2:06:47 with Benson Kipruto third in 2:07:00. Patrick Tiernan was twenty-fourth in 2:10:34, Andrew Buchanan forty-fifth in 2:12:58 and Liam Adams forty-ninth in 2:13:33.
That’s it from the stadium. The women’s marathon awaits as the final athletics event of Paris2024.
