Athletes Who Waited for the Tokyo Olympics Are Asking: Why Not Stick Around for Paris 2024, Too?
After a long wait for this summer’s Games, some old hands who had planned to retire are figuring they can also hang on another three years
Many veteran U.S. Olympians were planning to hang it up after the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. When the pandemic pushed them back a year, aging bodies sighed, contemplated quitting, and then went back to training anyway.
Now a curious thing is happening: the Tokyo Games haven’t even happened yet, and some of those athletes are already committing to trying to keep going another three years for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Gymnast Simone Biles, who has been undefeated in all-around competition since 2013, had already announced her intention to retire after trying to defend her Olympic crowns in Tokyo. She had also initially said, after the pandemic postponement, that she wasn’t sure she could even manage another 12 months of training.
But Biles, 24 years old and still getting significantly better, now says that her French coaches, Cecile and Laurent Landi, have already got her thinking about continuing to train to compete in Paris on a subset of the gymnastics events.
“Cecile and Laurent are from Paris and so they’ve kind of guilted me into at least being a specialist and coming back,” Biles told reporters this week. “The main goal is 2021 Olympics first, then tour, and then we’ll have to see.”
She did not specify which apparatus she might consider focusing on. Biles is the reigning world champion on balance beam, floor exercise and vault. She also holds a world silver medal from 2018 on the uneven bars, her weakest event that she has dramatically improved under the Landis.
Not every American star can imagine France. Four-time Olympic sprinter Allyson Felix, who already holds nine gold and three silver medals and is 35 years old, said this week that she plans for Tokyo to be her final Olympics, though she might not stop racing immediately after the Games.
And Sam Mikulak, a 28-year-old male gymnast who has won the U.S. all-around title six times, is adamant that he’s done.
“The only way I’m able to keep going right now is because I’m doing at least an hour of manual treatment every day, an hour of rehab a day, an hour of strength and conditioning–and then I have to do gymnastics,” he said.
But the prospect of Biles competing on anything is a suggestion to make television executives, sportswriters and American fans giddy. And if they’re lucky, it will play out across a variety of other sports too.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s sports psychologists say they’ve noticed more athletes indicating interest in continuing past Tokyo because Paris is now one year closer than in a normal four-year Olympic cycle.
April Ross, a 38-year-old beach volleyball player, said she hadn’t been clear heading into 2020 on her plans for after Tokyo. The postponement changed that.
“Now that there’s only three years between Tokyo and Paris, it seems more attainable to do three more years,” said Ross, who won a silver medal at the 2012 Games in London with Jennifer Kessy and a bronze at the 2016 Games in Rio with Kerri Walsh Jennings.
“I don’t want to retire prematurely, physically I feel great, still love competing and I would love to go to Paris for the Olympics…and have my family be able to be there, if that’s going to be my last one.”
Several older athletes said they were motivated in part by the recent announcement that overseas spectators will not be able to attend the Tokyo Games, a ban that will likely include athletes’ family members.
“I started a family with my wife a little over a year ago and the thought of the grind of our overseas professional seasons, and coming back to the States, playing with the national team, not really having much time off to be active in my children’s life definitely came to the forefront of my brain in thinking about my future as a volleyball player,” said Matt Anderson, 33 years old, who has competed at two Olympics already and won a bronze medal with the U.S. team in Rio.
“That being said, not allowing international fans to this Olympic Games, I want my family to be part of it…. So yeah, I believe I will be trying for Paris 2024!”
Lora Webster, a four-time Paralympian and four-time medalist in sitting volleyball, also said she wanted to be able to bring her three children to Paris. And, she added, she wanted to compete again in front of a large audience at least one more time. It isn’t yet clear how many Japanese spectators, if any, will be allowed to attend the Tokyo Games.
“The fans make such a big deal, and whether they’re rooting for you or against you, as athletes we feed off of that so it’s going to be weird this Games. So with the hopes of Paris being back to fans and having that, that’s a great motivator,” she said.
“And the three years seems like nothing when you look back on what these five years have felt like.”