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While particular displays and decisions at this year’s Olympic Games were disturbing, we need not be overly ruffled. Controversies and even Olympic achievements will fade, but the Games should remind Christians everywhere of the race that matters most: the one that ends with an eternal reward.
This summer. the city of Paris hosted the Olympic Games for the third time. The last time was in 1924, when devout Christian Eric Liddell, of “Chariots of Fire” fame, refused to compete in his best event because the heats were being held on a Sunday. Later that week, however, he broke a world record in a track event for which he had officially trained for only a few months.
Athletes train for years to compete in these games. Unfortunately the first few days of this year’s competition were overshadowed by online debates regarding several controversies from the starting pistol, as it were.
The Opening Ceremony for the XXXIII Olympiad, held for the first time outside a stadium, took place along the River Seine and included spectacle after spectacle. They included a graphic portrayal of a decapitated Marie Antoinette holding her own head.
Another spectacle seized the attention of viewers around the globe: the Festivité segment containing drag queens and other bawdy content. Despite an explicit statement from the Paris 2024 producers, apologizing for parodying Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper,” some claim that it was nothing more than a depiction of “The Feast of the Gods” featuring Dionysus, the Greek god of revelry and one of the twelve Olympians.
In all likelihood, there was a blending of depictions. Not only is there a history of linking Jesus with Dionysus, but it also presented the enticing opportunity to pun on the French words scene, cène (supper), and Seine (the river).
Post-ceremony controversies also reared their heads, such as the confusion surrounding multiple “trans” boxers. Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan battled qualifying disputes before. The International Boxing Association disqualified them both in 2023 for failing to meet “gender eligibility rules.”
The International Olympic Committee has not conducted sex testing since 1999. Their position seems to be that even if Khelif and Lin have disorders of sex development resulting in XY chromosomes and high levels of testosterone, they may still compete in the women’s category because they were assigned female at birth, have legal passports identifying them as female, and have always competed against women.
Despite the ongoing muddle regarding qualifications, it was a bout between Khelif and Angela Carini of Italy that sparked outrage when Carini, blood on her shorts, withdrew after less than a minute. The Italian claimed later that she had “never been hit so hard in [her] life.” The unusual match led to online clamoring and satirical headlines, joking that Olympic referees apparently must now remind female boxers not to hit each other below the belt. Both Khelif and Lin, who are in different weight classes, won their respective gold medal fights without much of a contest.
Toward the end of competition, U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles discovered that she may have to return her bronze medal due to multiple officiating mistakes, from initially undervaluing her floor exercise to the debacle regarding the timing of the coaching challenge. The U.S. plans to appeal, but the emotional rollercoaster has surely already taken a toll.
Thankfully, those controversies couldn’t overshadow the celebrations of athletes’ victories throughout these games. This year, break dancing and kayak cross joined the list of events, and some previously removed events returned, such as surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing.
For those who couldn’t — or wouldn’t — watch the television broadcast, here’s a recap of the athletic competition. The U.S. performed well, becoming the first nation to exceed 3,000 medals won throughout the decades of participating in the Summer and Winter Games. Ultimately, the U.S. won this year’s medal race, earning 40 golds and 126 total medals. China came in second, earning 40 golds but only 91 total.
Numerous records fell, many of them broken by U.S. athletes. Katie Ledecky became the most decorated female swimmer in Olympic history with eight golds, four silvers, and one bronze. She won the 1500m freestyle by more than ten seconds, and Bobby Finke broke the world record in the 1500m freestyle.
Other smashed world records include the mixed 4x100m medley relay and the women’s 4x100m medley relay, all won by American swimmers. The track and field 4x400m mixed relay team also set a new world record in preliminaries, although they lost to the Dutch in the final race.
Also on the track, several runners ended gold medal droughts for the U.S., with Noah Lyles winning gold in the 100m for the first time since Justin Gatlin won in 2004. Gabby Thomas took home gold in the 200m for the first time since Allyson Felix in 2012. In men’s 110m hurdles, Grant Holloway won U.S. gold for the first time since 2012. Quincy Wilson became the youngest-ever U.S. male track Olympian at age 16. Wilson ran a 4×400 relay heat for the team (although not in the final) and won a gold medal.
On the 100-year anniversary of Liddell’s 400m triumph in Paris in 1924, Quincy Hall won gold for the U.S. in dramatic fashion, coming back from fourth place around the final turn. Sha’Carri Richardson also had to make up some ground in the anchor leg of the 4x100m women’s relay, helping the U.S. team to win gold. Cole Hocker won a surprising gold for the U.S. in the men’s 1500m (and Yared Nuguse won bronze), and in the first U.S. sweep ever in the 400m hurdles, Rai Benjamin and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won individual golds.
Faces familiar and unfamiliar represented the U.S. in other sports. After pulling out of the Tokyo Games in 2021, Simone Biles returned to her third Olympiad. In more gymnastics highlights, the women won gold in the team competition, and the men’s team won bronze. Biles earned multiple other medals, including gold in the individual all-around and vault, while Stephen Nedoroscik won bronze on the pommel horse.
In cycling, Kristen Faulkner won the first U.S. gold in women’s road race in 40 years, after having been added to the Olympic team only one month before the Games began.
The U.S. women’s soccer team defeated Brazil in the gold medal match, winning 1-0 with a goal by Mallory Swanson in the 57th minute. The Americans dashed the hopes of Brazilian superstar Marta, who is retiring after the Olympics Games without ever having won a World Cup or Olympics tournament. The U.S. women’s team remains undefeated against Brazil in Olympic play, but this gold medal is the team’s first since 2012. The U.S. won three consecutive Olympic tournaments (2004, 2008, 2012) and have now won a total of five Olympic gold medals.
For the first time in men’s and women’s basketball, both finals saw the same two countries face off: the U.S. and France. In each case the U.S. beat the home team. The men’s team almost missed the gold-medal game because of a nailbiter of a semifinal against Serbia. Led by NBA superstar Nikola Jokić, winner of the 2023 NBA Championship and Finals MVP, Serbia were up by as many as 13 points. But Team USA stormed back to win in the fourth quarter, led by Steph Curry’s 36 total points.
In the final against France, LeBron James, age 39 and wearing golden shoes, willed the team to a fifth straight gold medal with his triple-double. Also named MVP of the tournament, James has won Olympic gold in three separate decades (2008, 2012, 2024). (One wonders how awkward it would have been to wear golden shoes while standing on the silver medal podium.)
Thanks to Curry’s four 3-pointers in the final three minutes of the game, the French were toast. The game may have been the most exciting moment in US-France Olympics basketball since Vince Carter’s “le dunk de la mort” in 2000 saw him jump over 7’2” center Frédéric Weis.
The women’s team won an eighth straight Olympic gold, squeaking past France by one point. Team USA’s Brittney Griner, who had protested the national anthem in the past but spent most of 2022 in a Russian jail, cried on the medal platform during the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
One Olympian’s Christian witness especially stands out from the crowd. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone became the first woman ever to beat the 52-second mark in the 400m hurdles, breaking her own world record for the sixth time.
At the 2021 Tokyo Games, she wrote on Instagram, “I don’t deserve anything. But by grace, through faith, Jesus has given me everything. Records come and go. The glory of God is eternal.” Earlier in 2024, McLaughlin-Levrone published a book about fear and faith, reminding us that our ultimate worth is not in earthly accomplishments.
Sports matter because our bodies matter, and our bodies matter because God made them as part of His act of creation. Not only has He pronounced it all good, but He put a further stamp of approval on human flesh in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Like fiction, sports at its best can pull us temporarily out of the real world and give us practice. Later, we can re-enter the real world and act with strength and courage. But our souls matter too.
As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:24-25,
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.”
These Games may have been everything they should be according to the world’s standards, but they were not — and never could be — everything to Christians.
The Olympics excite us all with spectacles of athletes pushing to become faster, higher, and stronger, but as Christians, we should see in them examples of the discipline and perseverance we should apply to our faith life — for these activities are reminiscent of Paul’s discussion in Philippians 3:14 of how we run after an eternal prize and the admonition of the author of Hebrews 12:2 that we should run with patience and endurance “the race set before us.”
And as for the perversions and mockery we witnessed during these Games, we need only look to Hosea 2:17, wherein the Old Testament prophet Hosea promised that one day God will erase even the memories of the pagan gods.
So while particular displays at this year’s Olympic Games were disturbing, we need not be overly ruffled. Controversies and even Olympic achievements will fade, but the Games remind Christians everywhere of the race that matters most.
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