paris 2024
After London 2012 I told myself I’d do all I could to attend every future Olympic gamaes, Rio didn’t work out, and whilst we had tickets for Tokyo covid had other plans, so I was EXCITED to be headed to Paris for the 2024 Olympics.
We had a ton of indoor and beach volleyball tickets, as well as Table Tennis, Water Polo and Athletics. We ended up skipping the Water Polo in favor of watching the Swiss women play in the beach semi so it was pretty volleyball intense in the end, fine by me!
We still found plenty of time around all the sports to hang with friends, soak up the vibes in Paris, linger in the perfect weather, and stroll the much quieter streets than usual. With less locals and lots of other pumped up olympics fans around it was such a nice version of Paris. We were lucky enough to stay with our friends’ parents so we got some good insights on how the locals were finding it (positive!) and watch some frenchies winning - with French people - which was always fun. We were also totally spoilt with amazing wine and cheese awaiting us each evening after a “tough” day running from event to event. As far as the sport goes…
The table tennis was wildly impressive, the reaction speed is completely ridiculous, we had almost front row seats so were up nice and close and there were a couple of super dramatic games in our session including with a French team involved which was fun.
The athletics was also great, we were right in front of the high jump with the Italian character and the quiet kiwi achiever on show. We saw some sprints, some middle distance and some throwing so a really great mixture. The roar of the crowd rounding the stadium as the French athletes ran past was super special and although it was our most expensive ticket it was totally worth it.
The indoor volleyball venue was great and the crowds were awesome, really into it regardless of the sometimes one-sided games we sadly ended up seeing! Slovenia was the standout team for me, for such a small country their program must be so well run to produce talent like that, take note VNZ.
But for me of course the absolute highlight was the Beach Volleyball, with one of the most iconic venues right under the Eiffel tower and perfect weather for every game we attended… I was in sports heaven. The cherry on top was seeing Nina and Tanja in their semi final (an absolute thriller which they bounced back from to win the bronze!).
