Bonjour!

In just over 80 days, the world’s attention will turn to Paris - the host of the 2024 Summer Olympics. It is the greatest show on earth, with about 10,500 athletes from 206 countries and territories competing across 32 sports and 329 medal events. Billions are expected to watch it all play out on television, and local organisers are expecting about 300,000 in-person attendees for the opening ceremony alone.

After the Olympics, we will be fortunate enough to dive straight into the 2024 Paralympics. It’ll be a big few months of sport.

There is so much to be excited about. To get you in the mood, here are four Australian athletes we’ll be watching in the final months of Olympic qualifiers.

Ready to feel old? Chloe Covell hopes to get to Paris for street skateboarding, and she was born in 2010. Covell is one of the youngest athletes from any nation who could qualify for this year’s games and already has a taste for gold after winning the top gong at the X Games in California last year.

It’s the second time skateboarding will be an Olympic event, so if this is the first time you’ll be watching the sport, you can expect to see two disciplines, park and street, on the agenda. As for Covell, she’ll have to impress judges in a series of 45-second runs, where she’ll execute as many tricks as she can.

When: 28 July for street, 6 August for park (Prelims and Finals are on the same day)

Calab Law’s chances look good after he won the gold medal in the 200m track sprint at the Australian Athletic Championships last month. Another one of Australia’s youngest athletes (he’s 20), Law is a proud Wakka Wakka man from Queensland. This year, he was awarded a scholarship through the 2024 Sport Australia Hall of Fame Scholarship and Mentoring Program.

Law models his career on track legend Cathy Freeman. In an interview, he said “I want someone to look up to me like I look up to Cathy or look up to other Indigenous sprinters — that’s really what I want by the end of my career.” We’re excited.

When: 5 August (Men’s 200m round 1)

We caught a glimpse of Mollie O’Callaghan in the Tokyo Games, where she competed as part of the women’s relay teams and came away with two gold medals. In 2024, we think the 20-year-old Queenslander will come into her own. O’Callaghan currently holds the world record in the 200m freestyle (she set it in Japan in July 2023 after the previous world record stood for 14 years), was the 2023 world champion in the 100m and 200m freestyle, and could potentially compete in six events in Paris.

Last year, she was named Australia’s Olympic Program Swimmer of the Year, and is coached by iconic Australian swimming coach Dean Boxall (you may remember his celebrations from last Olympics). She’s a true competitor who won’t stop at gold - as recently as last month, after winning the 100m freestyle event at the Australian Swimming Championships, O’Callaghan said “I would have liked faster… there’s plenty more things I’ve got to improve”.

When: Sunday 28 July (Women’s 200m Freestyle Heats)

Across all the gymnastics disciplines, Australia has won a single medal in Olympic history (a silver in the men’s trampoline at the Sydney Games in 2000), but that could change this year with Tyson Bull.

Bull, a 30-year-old Victorian, was Australia’s only male artistic gymnast at the Tokyo Olympics, where he finished fifth in the Horizontal Bar, making him the first Australian male artistic gymnast to make an Olympic men’s gymnastics apparatus final. He also won a silver medal on Horizontal Bar at the 2022 Commonwealth Games - all with a serious ankle injury. In the time since that event, Bull now has a Master’s degree in physiotherapy from Melbourne’s Swinburne University. Let’s hope he can add a medal to his list of achievements.

When: Saturday 27 July (Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Qualification)

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One more thing from TDA

If that rundown got you excited about the Olympics, you should definitely subscribe to our new TDA Sport newsletter, which launches on Monday.

During the Olympics, we’ll have daily schedules, recaps of the events, and a medal tally so you can keep up to speed with the events. But don’t wait until then — there’s plenty of sport happening in Australia and around the world every day, and this newsletter is for you to help you participate in the social conversation surrounding sport. Sign up now.