Every Olympic Games follows a familiar structure, but the flavour and spirit of each host city is what makes them the magnificent, unique spectacles that they are. And Paris 2024 has been no different – just think back to that wacky opening ceremony, with the guillotined singing heads and thieving French minions.
But the ceremony, as memorable as it was, is far from the only quirk that we’ve noticed so far. If you’ve been as attached to your screens as the rest of us while the athletics events have been running (pardon the pun), you’ll probably have witnessed gold medal winners excitedly ringing a victory bell which is located near the finish line in the Stade de France. But why?
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Why do athletes ring a bell at the Paris 2024 Olympics?
That bell, as the eagle-eyed among us will have noticed, is engraved with ‘Paris 2024’ and it’s actually part of the massive refurb of the Notre Dame Cathedral, which suffered severe fire damage back in 2019.
It was made in Normandy, but once the Games are over, the bell will be removed from the stadium and hung in one of the Cathedral’s bell towers.
‘In a way, Paris 2024 is helping to rebuild Notre-Dame. A part of the Games and the Olympic spirit will remain in Notre Dame for life,’ said Pierre-André Lacout, a manager at the Stade de France, according to the Huffington Post. So, lucky for Paris, a ring enhanced with Olympic glory will ring out over the city for years to come.
The athletics at the Olympics so far
While the Olympics have meant some of us have developed obsessions with sports we haven’t really witnessed before (who knew BMX biking was so exciting, right?), the track and field events have been crowd pleasers for quite some time.
And the finals of some blockbuster athletics events have already taken place, glueing many of us to our seats and screens. Both the men’s and women’s gold medals in the 100m sprint have been claimed, by Team USA’s Noah Lyles and Team St Lucia’s Julien Alfred (claiming the nation’s first-ever medal, no less!) respectively. In the women’s 800m, Team GB’s Keely Hodgkinson won gold, and in the men’s 1500m, Team USA’s Cole Hocker surprised everyone by overtaking favourites and famous rivals Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Up there with the most thrilling watch so far was Mondo Duplantis’s pole vault performance, where the Swedish athlete not only claimed the gold medal, but succeeded to break his own world record – jaw-dropping stuff.
The men’s decathlon events have already taken place (and Norway’s Markus Rooth claimed gold) but kicking off today are the women’s heptathlon events, and you can look at the full schedule for that here – plenty more bell-ringing to come.
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