The 2024 Olympics & Paralympics will be held in Paris on the banks of river Seine. The city of fashion and perfumes, which was once a fishermen’s village, has once again been entrusted to hold the mega sports event after almost one hundred years. With a rich history and Gothic style of architecture the city is the centre of intellectual ferment known as enlightenment and was the main stage of the French Revolution.

The XXXIII Olympiad will be held from 26 July to 11 August followed by the Paralympic Games to be held from 28 August to 8 September next year in which approximately 10,500 athletes of more than 200 countries will participate in over 400 events across summer and winter games of 2024.

The opening ceremony of the game will be held in Jardins du Trocadero, whereas the closing ceremony will be staged in Stade de France and historic river Seine. Besides Paris, the cities of Marseille, Lille, Nice, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Chateauroux and Tahiti will also hold various games and events of Olympics 2024.

With the theme of “live together, play together”, this greatest sports extravaganza will be managed by 45,000 volunteers including 3000 disabled volunteers who will perform their duties in athlete’s village, the main press centre, training venues and transport hubs in France.

While the Pakistani society fight outs its political and economic battles and continues to live in the magical spell of game of cricket, the athletes all around the world ably supported by respective governments and sports federations are focused on their physical, mental and technical training, to make their impression and ink their names in the annals of Olympic history.

The limitation of space for the write up doesn’t allow taking into account the preparations of all sports and athletes around the world, but a broad look at sports with maximum Olympic medals will reveal the level of interest and preparations being undertaken around the globe.

If we look at the world of track & field, the World Athletic Indoor Championship has already concluded in Nanjing China. The Marathon runners focusing on the Olympics are extremely keen to participate in the Paris Marathon to be held on 2nd April, as it will provide great athletes around the world to orientate with the route and surroundings of the 2024 Olympic Marathon. This will be followed by the World Athletics Relay in China in May 2023, and the World Athletics Championship 2023 in Budapest, Hungary.

Despite many international athletic events in the calendar year the champion athletes will yet test their mettle in the World Indoor Athletic Championship in Glasgow in March 2024. The medal hungry US athletic team will continue with their final preparations till they hold a US Olympic team trial for the final Track & Field outfit in June 2024.

US, besides track and field and swimming competitions, will seriously focus on gymnastics. A large contingent of US gymnasts will participate in the World Gymnastics Championship in September this year in Belgium, while the final trials for the US Olympics gymnastic team will be held in June 2024.

Swimming is another event with a large tally of Olympic medals. FINA World Championship in Fukuoka, Japan, in July this year followed by FINA World Championship 2024 in Doha will allow the world class swimmers to assess their abilities and fine tune their preparations.

American swimmers like athletics and gymnastics will also try to fetch maximum medals in swimming. The American sports system will leave nothing to chance and despite a large pool of world record-breaking swimmers in the backup, the trials for US Olympic swimming will be held in Indianapolis in June 2024.

In cycling, the Tour de France always holds great attraction. Tour de France & Mountain Bike World Championships will be held from 1 to 23 July 2023 followed by UCI Cycling World Championship in Glasgow in August 2023.

Being an ardent fan of basketball, I must mention


here that the FIBA Men’s Basketball World Cup will be jointly hosted by the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia this year from 25 August to 10 September and the FIBA Women’s Olympic qualification tournament will take place from 4 to 12 February, 2024.

Four new sports — Breaking, Sport Climbing, Skateboarding and Surfing — will feature in the Olympics in 2024. Breaking is a version of modern breakdancing which is an extremely physically intensive sport. The WDSF World Breaking Championship will take place in Leuven, Belgium, in September 2023.

Sport Climbing is a version of rock climbing on short routes where emphasis is on the physical aspect of the game. The IFSC Climbing World Championship before the Olympics will be held in Bern, Switzerland, in August 2023.

The games of skateboarding and surfing need no introduction. Those preparing for Olympic Skateboarding will be greatly interested to participate in the Rome Street Skateboard Championship in Italy in June 2023.

Pakistan is lucky that instead of a complete whitewash in the Olympics, the only Muslim nuclear state with a population of 231 million will be represented by four shooters in its 19th Summer Olympic appearance in France.

Out of the four shooters, two are 35 years old Gulam Mustafa Bashir who earned a quota place after winning a bronze medal at World Shooting Championship and Gulam Joseph who has earned a direct birth to Paris after finishing 6th in ISSF world shooting in men’s 10-metre air pistol competition.

There is no news about the training of any male or female athlete, weightlifter, wrestler, judo player or boxer earning a place in Paris Olympics qualifiers or training anywhere for the grand competition. What to talk of preparation for the Olympics, there is no news regarding training of athletes for the Asian Games to be held in Hangzhou, China, in September this year.

Pakistan’s national game hockey is also struggling for its survival. Pakistan, once the World and Olympic champion, is now ranked 16th in the world. Pakistan’s outright chance to qualify for the Paris Olympics is to win the Asian hockey title in the Asian Games in China this year, which in present circumstances is a difficult proposition.

Hockey gurus of Pakistan are now targeting the two FIH qualification tournaments of early 2024 where 16 teams, five from Asia, seven from Europe, two Pan American and one each from Africa & Oceania will compete in two qualifying rounds and the top three teams in each Olympic qualification tournament will qualify for Paris.

Though I wish to see Pakistan hockey participating in the Olympics in my lifetime, with the present state of affairs of PHF and the pool of players available in the country, it doesn’t look likely. However, it would be interesting to see when Pakistan Breaking, Skateboarding and Surfing federations will emerge with voting rights for survival of elite sports bodies in the country.

The Olympics is a serious business. Unfortunately, our approach towards sports and games is extremely unprofessional, and with the present state of affairs I don’t see any visible improvement in this regard in the imaginable future.

If Pakistani sports policy makers continue to manage and conduct the sports matters in same unprofessional manner and fail to invest in development of mother sports like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, then the day is not far when not only our participation in Olympics will completely wither off, but our sports footprints will also wilt away at Asian and SAF level.

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