A Spotlight on Paris 2024’s Female Olympians

Written by Lucy Dunnet, Tuesday 13th August 2024

Aug 13, 2024

Celebrating some of the phenomenal women we have seen competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics and their impact on women in sport

Something really, really exciting has been happening at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Wherever I go, whatever I watch, whoever I talk to, the recurring theme has been: women, women, women in the Olympics.

I was hanging out with some friends on Saturday, enjoying the glorious weather in a pub and watching the women's cycling (or should I say, squinting at the TV and trying to figure out why they were cycling slowly and checking each other out one minute, then holding hands and speeding off the next). We quickly got onto the topics of not just which of us had a professional cycling friend who could explain the Keirin to us (as it turns out, Team Canada’s cyclist Jackie Boyle is a mutual friend), but of all the incredible feats this year’s female Olympians had achieved. Did you see British heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson finally win her well-overdue Olympic medal? Oh yes. How cool is it that American track and field superstar Allyson Felix enabled the set up of a nursery in the Paris Olympic Village? Ground-breakingly cool.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) set the goal of reaching a full gender parity at the Paris 2024 Olympic games, the city in which over a century ago women made their Olympic debut. Ahead of the opening ceremony, the official IOC database showed 5,712 male athletes and 5,503 female athletes, including backups, making the percentage of the actual total 49.1% women. They may have fallen slightly short of their goal, but this is still progress and an improvement on the Tokyo 2020 games’ 47.8% of all athletes being women. Little by little, women are walking far.

How did they achieve this? The focus on gender equality was woven into every element of the Paris Olympics. The IOC worked tirelessly with each sport’s governing body to replace some men’s medal events with more for women, reaching a final total of 152 medal events for women, 157 for men, and 20 for mixed-gender. In the words of Nawal El Moutawakel, executive board member of the IOC and the first Arab African woman to win an Olympic gold medal, “the IOC placed gender equality directly in the spotlight at the Opening Ceremony”. They did this by changing their rules not only to allow but also to actively encourage each team to have one female and one male athlete jointly carry their country’s flag. There was also the deliberate scheduling of events to make it possible for a more balanced coverage of all athletes. The IOC has commented that, “its commitment to advancing gender equality does not end in Paris”: a statement that the world will certainly hold them to.

While we at Women Who Fight would love to celebrate each and every one of the 5,503 female athletes at this Olympics, I can’t imagine even the most avid of sports fans would be keen to read that long of a substack post. So instead, we have chosen a handful of female Olympians who are incredible both in their field of play and out of it, and whose sporting contributions and voices are having an immense impact on women's sport.

Gabby Thomas: Incredible on the track, inspirational off of it.

Gabby Thomas, a Team USA sprinter who specialises in the 100m and 200m events, debuted in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, winning bronze in the 200m and silver in the 4x100m relay. In Paris, she won triple gold in the 200m, 4x100m relay, and 4x400m relay. Being a 5x Olympic medallist and known as one of the fastest women in the world is a mind-bogglingly impressive achievement in itself. But Gabby Thomas is also a Harvard graduate, with a Master’s Degree in epidemiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center, who volunteers at a health care clinic in Austin, Texas, for people without insurance at night. To top it off, she also suffered a hamstring injury in 2022 meaning she didn’t make the team for worlds, and had to rehab hard to prepare for the Paris Olympics in 2024. This Olympian shows that with extreme hard work and a willingness to push yourself to the edge, anything is possible. A literal world-class multi-tasker, with a heart of gold and a work ethic of steel, Gabby Thomas is an inspiration to every woman and every human out there.

“It’s important to have multiple things to put energy into. It actually is very healthy for me, mentally, to not ONLY have track.”

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Simone Biles: Transcending the Olympics and redefining what success should look like.

No female Olympian spotlight would be complete without Simone Biles. She won 3 gold medals and 1 silver at the Paris 2024 Olympics, bringing her Olympic medal total to 11 and making her the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history, as well as one of the most celebrated athletes of all time. But what really makes Simone Biles stand out as not just a world-class athlete, but a truly inspirational role model, is her courage to prioritise her mental and physical health, and compete, or not compete, always on her own terms. When she pulled out of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Biles made a huge statement to the world that nothing, not even the chance of Olympic medals, is worth destroying yourself over. She described walking away from the games as “her biggest win”, putting herself first for one of the first times in her career.

Simone Biles’ mother has the greatest nickname for her: little turtle, to remind her to always go at her own pace and be herself. The origin of Biles’ transformation of gymnastics lies within this “little turtle” concept, as in the face of unreasonable demands from her coaches, she refused to dim her personality. This resulted in Márta Károlyi, the then-national team coordinator, having to let “Biles be Biles”. What started as giggling at team camps and breaking the long-standing rule of silence and obedience from all gymnasts, but this being ok because “she’s so good”, progressed to performing some of the hardest moves in gymnastics history and having five named after her. Simone Biles has pushed the sport of gymnastics forward so far that most of us probably need a good set of binoculars to see it, but what we don’t need binoculars to see is the inspirational impact her bravery and openness is having on the world.

“There’s such high expectations on me that I’m supposed to win, so whenever I do win or get whatever medal that is, I feel relief off my shoulder like, ‘I did it. I’m done. Let’s move on to the next.”

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Cindy Ngamba: Leading the way for all refugees, and humans, around the world.

Cindy Ngamba started making history when she became the first-ever refugee boxer to qualify for the Olympic Games. She made history a second time when she won bronze in the women’s boxing -75kg category, achieving the first-ever medal for the refugee team. Ngamba has fought her way through adversity and hardships completely incomprehensible to most: having lived in the UK since she was 10 years old, she is unable to return to her home country, Cameroon, due to her sexuality. At the age of 20, Ngamba and her brother were sent to a detention camp in London and threatened with deportation. Through all of this, her hard work and dedication to the “beautiful sport” of boxing never wavered: to become a three-time national champion in three weight classes and pioneer of women’s boxing in her home club, whilst dealing with the uncertainty of where she could call home or if she might be condemned to prison, is nothing short of astounding.

“I want to say to all the refugees all around the world and refugees that are not athletes, and mainly humans around the world, that you have to keep on working hard, keep on believing in yourself. You can achieve whatever you put your mind to.”

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Helen Maroulis: Women not only belong in wrestling, but they are damn good at it too.

Helen Maroulis, who has been wrestling since she was 7 years old, won her third Olympic medal in the Paris 2024 games. In addition to becoming the first American woman to win an Olympic wrestling gold medal in Rio 2016, her bronze in the -57kg freestyle category at the Paris games also makes her the first American woman to win three Olympic wrestling medals. From the moment Maroulis first stepped onto the mats, it was love at first wrestle. Despite this, she had to work hard to convince her parents to let her keep training and it was only in 2001 when wrestling was made an Olympic sport, did they concede.

But the battle wasn’t over as, being one of only two female wrestlers in Maryland, Maroulis had to fight boys through high school. Some boys would rather quit than lose to her, others were encouraged by their coaches to “break her”, and even parents of some of the boys she had beaten would hurl abuse at her: none of this fazed Helen Maroulis. As the years went on, the onslaught of obstacles continued, including long losing streaks, PTSD (induced by multiple concussions), forced retirement and institutionalisation, and shoulder surgery. Maroulis’ wrestling journey is a testament to her pure grit and determination, and that love for a sport and hard work will beat natural talent every time. Helen Maroulis is a legend, one who will always be celebrated for opening the door for thousands of girls to pursue their wrestling dreams.

“I want people to see me wrestle and be like that’s just a good wrestler. Girl or guy, that’s just a good wrestler.”

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Yaylagul Ramazanova: Being pregnant doesn’t equate to stepping into life’s waiting room, it is competing at the Olympics.

When I think of being pregnant, I worry about how I would manage to keep working my office job, train BJJ, and survive long walks if I don’t know where the nearest bathroom is… to be honest, I worry about how I would leave the house. There is so much out there, in the news, and in popular culture, making us believe pregnant women have to press pause on their life. Yaylagul Ramazanova has shown that this is absolutely not true, and she has an epic Olympic win to prove it. This first-time Olympian from Azerbaijan was six and a half months pregnant when she achieved a perfect 10 in her shoot-off against Chinese archer An Qixuan, saying she felt her baby kick just before releasing the arrow. Even though she was eliminated in the next round, she won something much greater: the hearts and respect of millions across the globe, and an incredible story to share with her unborn child.

“I felt that I was not fighting alone, but fighting together with my baby."

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