How can our athletes get to the Olympic podium

The Daily Advertiser's Tahlia Sinclair explains the progression of athletes through groups and heats at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Filmed July, 2024

Transcript

00:00Winning an Olympic gold.

00:01It's something that children across the globe dream about,

00:04and 10,000 athletes are one step closer to achieving that dream this month

00:07when they arrive in Paris, France for the 2024 Olympics.

00:11Watching medals get won is one of the highlights of the Olympics,

00:13but there's a lot of sport happening before we get to that final stages.

00:16Pulls, heats and single elimination are the most common ways

00:20that athletes are eliminated from the Olympics.

00:22Very few sports at the Olympics are first-past-the-line wins.

00:26Marathon swimming and triathlon are two great examples

00:28where every athlete gets to compete for that medal.

00:30But for the most part, pulls, single elimination and heats

00:34are the way that we narrow down the field.

00:36For most athletes though, there is no second chances.

00:38That's a single elimination competition such as tennis.

00:41Fencing means if you lose, you're out.

00:44So, let's talk to some experts about what this all means

00:46and how we can see Australia in medal contention.

00:48Coming into the Olympics, all the teams that qualify for the Olympics

00:52are split into groups.

00:54I believe in the basketball this year, we have three separate groups.

00:57Each pool will play all the teams once.

01:00So, there's four teams in each of the pools.

01:02From there, you go through the quarterfinals,

01:05your semifinals and then obviously the grand finals.

01:08In individual sports where there's a high number of competitors,

01:10you'll often see them competing in heats before a final medal event.

01:14These heats help narrow down the competitor pool.

01:17Heat is pretty much where there's like the amount of swimmers

01:21that have qualified for whatever event it is.

01:24There could be maybe like 50 swimmers that have qualified for that event

01:28and obviously of 10 lanes.

01:29So, you're split up.

01:30More people qualify for their heats, like in their swim in the heats,

01:35but they probably won't make the final.