With track and field still two days away, there’s no lack of opportunity for the sport’s biggest athletes to make a splash in the Seine (literally and figuratively) as the Paris Olympics are now officially underway. While we didn’t get an Ingebrigtsen brothers feature on Celine Dion’s Eiffel Tower performance, we did get French Olympic legend Marie-José Pérec lighting the Olympic cauldron to officially kick off the Games.

For a sport considered “niche” the other 51 weeks of the year and the other three years of the quadrennium, track and field sure does a lot of heavy lifting as the face of the Olympic Games. For starters, NBC’s Olympic promo graphic in the United States features four athletes: Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Sha’Carri Richardson, and Noah Lyles. Not only does track and field take up two of the four slots, which the NBC overlords seem to think is their best shot at grabbing 50% of the American attention span, but it’s also tacitly elevating Lyles and Richardson, two athletes who’ve won one Olympic medal combined, to a pair of eight-time Olympic medalists. Sure, it’s just one “cut to commercial” visual, but it’s telling.

While Team USA was represented by Coco Gauff and LeBron James, track and field makes up a disproportionate proportion of other nations’ Olympic flag bearers. From Olympic champions Jasmine Camacho-Quinn and Gianmarco Tamberi to veteran sprinters Akani Simbine and Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith, many of your favorite athletes to cheer for on the track were representing their home countries out on the Seine.

One of the most fun and heartwarming phenomena of the Olympics is watching our favorite athletes across many sports meet and interact – whether it’s Minnesotans Anthony Edwards and Dakotah Lindwum, fan favorites Tara Davis-Woodhall and Coco Gauff, or LeBron James angling for a spot on the 4x100m. For once in their lives, track stars are the cool kids! And there’s nothing more thrilling to occasionally-indignant fans than seeing a bunch of multimillionaire “mainstream” athletes pal around with their favorite runners, jumpers, and throwers.

Already, one of the feel-good moments of the Paris Games has been the mutual admiration between Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Kiwi rugby player Michaela Blyde. Blyde went viral for the video of her (understandably) freaking out about meeting the Jamaican sprint star, and in turn SAFP cheered on her biggest fan at her match on Sunday where she equalled some sort of rugby record we don’t understand.

Clearly, when the Olympics do roll around, the entire world takes track and field very seriously. As they should – we’ve got a lot to offer! Few sports cover the range of nations, backgrounds, body types, and skill sets represented in track and field, and the good news that you, dear reader, already know is that these athletes don’t just compete for two weeks every four years – they’re doing this cool stuff all the time!

In case you’re wondering, “Are all these track and field athletes actually going to do any athletics in Paris? If so– who, what, when?” We’ve got you covered. The CITIUS MAG team has been churning out event previews all week in our other newsletter feed. The final preview drops tomorrow morning, and if you want daily updates on all the action from Paris, you can subscribe there!

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