Olympic Daily Dispatch Day 4: Raising The Bar

We’re gonna start calling it “field and track” after last night.

With all due respect to the fantastic running that took place inside the Stade de France yesterday evening, the stars of the show were squarely placed on the infield, as two Olympic champions defended their titles in historic fashion and one cemented his spot in the record books even further.

Mondo Duplantis is already the world record holder indoors and out, the 3-time defending global champion and 2-time World Indoor champion who hasn’t lost a competition all year. But he still manages to improve on past versions of himself, and for the third time in the last calendar year, he improved his own world record by a centimeter, to 6.25m (that’s 20 feet, 6 inches).

For Mondo, the early rounds of even the highest levels of competition look almost comical. While the best pole vaulters in the world stretch and twist to barely sneak over the bar on the second or third try, Duplantis clears every height below 6 meters by a mile. When he does miss, it’s usually because his attempts are so geared for higher vaulting that he nails the bar on the way up.

At 24 years old, we’re not seeing the end of Duplantis breaking his own records any time soon. But every time it happens, the wider sports world is reminded of just how special a talent the Louisiana-born Swede really is.

Over in the throwing oval, American Valarie Allman also had no trouble picking up her second Olympic title in as many cycles. That’s not to say that Allman has always had it easy: since Tokyo, Allman has finished 2nd and 3rd in the next two World Championships despite being the world leader both years. But there was no denying the graceful Texan this time, as all four of her legal throws would’ve sufficed to place first in the competition.

Allman’s 69.50m winning throw wasn’t her farthest this year, but that’s because she’s been so consistently excellent. Six of the seven longest efforts of 2024 belong to Allman, including two competitions over the elusive 70-meter barrier. Allman’s gold medal was Team USA’s 11th (3rd gold) in track and field so far — the next highest total is Kenya with three medals total.

Too often, field events are forced to play second-fiddle to the flashy theatrics on the oval, but not this time: the discus and pole vault finals were literally and figuratively center stage. And with some of the sport’s biggest and most popular stars coming from the infield, it should come as no surprise that the fans appreciate a towering leap or a gravity-defying throw as much as anything Noah Lyles can do on the track.

As we head toward the second half of the track and field schedule, our CITIUS MAG crew continues to offer top-tier reporting and banter from Paris with the GOOD MORNING TRACK AND FIELD crew featuring Eric Jenkins, Mitch Dyer, and Karen Leisewicz at 8:30 am E.T. each day and the TORCH TALK podcast after the final events wrap up. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify for daily reports straight from the heart of the action.

What To Watch On Day 5

The women’s 1500m kicks off the action (at 4am if you’re on the East Coast of the U.S….) and we’ll see how Faith Kipyegon bounces back from all the 5000m drama. Plus, Nikki Hiltz, Elle St. Pierre, and Emily MacKay get in on the action for Team USA.

Finals of the women’s hammer throw and men’s long jump will headline the field action and the track will be red-hot after men’s 1500m leads off the track finals of the day. Josh Kerr, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and more go head-to-head for one of the most coveted titles in the whole sport. Then a closely-contested women’s steeplechase final will pit Olympic champ Peruth Chemutai against World champ Winfred Yavi and world record holder Beatrice Chepkoech while Americans Val Constien and Courtney Wayment vie for a spot on the podium.

Finally, we’ll see if Gabby Thomas can upgrade her bronze from Tokyo to a gold in the women’s 200m final or if Julien Alfred will complete the 100m/200m double.

You can find a full schedule and live results here.

Race of the Day: Women’s 5000m

The women’s 5000m had everything — the last four global champions, the world record holders over 1500m, 5000m, 10,000m, and 5km, and a whole bunch of runners with more global medals they can count.

But even with so many proven commodities in the field, the final still managed to surprise. A moderate early pace seemed to be playing perfectly into reigning World champ Faith Kipyegon’s hands, and as she moved to the lead with a mile to go, it seemed like smooth sailing. But 2022 World champ Gudaf Tsegay wasn’t going to let her control the race without a fight — literally — as the Ethiopian cut in on her rival on a straightaway with more than a few elbows thrown. But Kipyegon held the inner line and when she unleashed her trademark finishing kick in the final lap, gold seemed assured.

But her countrywoman Beatrice Chebet, the reigning World XC champ and a formidable middle-distance runner in her own right, and after claiming a silver in 2022 and a bronze in 2023, she finally had the right tools at the right time to outkick Kipyegon and claim her first global gold on the track. The 24-year-old Chebet is as much a generational talent as anyone, and with a world record in the 10,000m earlier this spring and continued success in cross-country, it seems like she may have ascended to an even higher level.

Kipyegon still got a silver medal — initially — and Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan managed to snag a bronze at the start of her 5000m-10,000m-marathon triple. Then the news came via the results page that Kipyegon, not Tsegay, had been disqualified for the contact earlier in the race, and Italian Nadia Battocletti, who ran an incredible race in her own right to take fourth, had been upgraded. Anyone who watched the replay was confused, to say the least: Kipyegon had neither instigated the contact nor moved out of her spot on the rail, so why was she being cited?

A few hours later, justice was served and Kipyegon was reinstated. But as both the Kenyan and her sparring partner Tsegay are back in a few short hours to match up in the 1500m, the not-so-friendly rivalry will certainly continue to play out over the next three rounds and four days of racing.

Athlete of the Day: Keely Hodgkinson

God save the Queen!

While certainly Mondo Duplantis has earned a spot as Athlete of the Day — maybe even Athlete of the Decade — he didn’t do anything yesterday he hasn’t done before. He’s already won Olympic gold, and this is the ninth time he’s broken the world record.

Keely Hodgkinson, on the other hand, finally had a very important first. After claiming three straight silvers in runner-up finishes at the 2021 Olympics, 2022 Worlds, and 2023 Worlds, the 22-year-old Brit finally got her gold in the 800m final in Paris.

Hodgkinson loves controlling the race from the front, and that’s exactly what she did, leading almost every step of the 800m final as she has all season. Hodgkinson may have finished second at global championships in the past but she hasn’t lost an 800m all year. And although there were several runners in striking distance with 100 meters to go, the Brit was just too much for the competition in the final stretch and easily separated to cross the line in 1:56.72 with a 0.43-second margin of history.

There will surely be some “what if” talk among Americans in particular about the possibility of a fully-healthy Athing Mu defending her title had she not fallen in the U.S. Trials, but the facts of what did happen speak for themselves. Hodgkinson has not been seriously pushed to the line in a race all season, and she handily dispached last year’s World champion Mary Moraa and this year’s World Indoor champion Tsige Duguma in the final. We’ll never know what woulda-coulda-shoulda been, but Hodgkinson has earned her Olympic title beyond any doubts.

Photo of the Day

A sweet moment of congratulations between 5000m third-placer Sifan Hassan and winner Beatrice Chebet.

Social Moment of the Day

Omega Watches offers a detailed analysis of Mondo Duplantis’s world-record pole vault — suggesting he has more room to go higher.

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