It’s upon us.  

We are exactly eight minutes away from the conclusion of the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. Yes, the Opening Ceremony is a total cheese-fest. Yes, about a third of the athletes will have caught a cold from standing out in the rain for so long. But I for one, am fizzing.  

I love the Olympics. Absolutely love them. Always have, and even though of course I can see clearly enough that they are an obscenely commercialised orgy of hyper-capitalism, consumption, and junk food sponsorship deals, I’ve never wavered in suspending my cynicism for a few weeks every four years, and I doubt I ever will.  

Usually, the only things that get the whole World’s attention are bad things: wars, terrorism, and natural disasters. The Olympics are about as close as humanity comes to a shared experience of, and shared interest in something good. It’s about our only truly shared collective celebration.   

I remember once filming alongside a super-conservative Mennonite community in rural Pennsylvania. The Mennonites eschew most modern technology and deliberately cloister themselves from much of the rest of the World. Twelve years ago, I asked a woman from the community if she’d heard of the Olympics. She’d never watched them, she said. But she’d heard of them. Was it something where people from different countries came together?  

Yeah, I said. It is.   

My favourite Olympic events are the primal ones. Ones where you don’t need crazy specialised equipment. Ones where the barriers to entry are relatively low.   

Who can swim the fastest? Sprint the quickest? Jump the highest? Do the most impressive flips?  

Outside of New Zealand’s medal prospects, these are the three sports I’m most excited about at the games:  

The 1500m. An absolute classic. Maybe it’s the legacy of Snell and Lovelock etc, but the thing I love about the 1500m is it’s the shortest running race to be properly tactical. I was in the front row of the stands at the Olympics in Rio, and remember my shock at seeing just how fast the 1500m runners were moving. TV gets you close, but you still lose something in perspective. In the men’s contest this year, the favourite is Norway’s defending Olympic champion. If Jakob Ingebrigtsen wins again, I think most middle-distance running fans will consider him the greatest 1500m runner ever.   

My second event is another running race and another all-time great. Eilud Kipchoge is the boss of Olympic marathoning. He was Olympic champion in 2016 and Olympic champion in 2020, and he’s pursuing a third consecutive title. Again, TV is good, but you can’t appreciate how fast they’re running until you see it!  

The athlete I’m most excited about at these games is Simone Biles. There aren’t really sufficient descriptors for what she’s capable of doing, but seeing her at her best, spinning and flipping and throwing herself into unbelievably complex and dangerous contortions really pushes my engrained understanding of what the human body is capable of. I was team Simone when she pulled out at the last games. How could you throw yourself into the stuff she does without absolute, supreme confidence? I’ve watched all the redemption documentaries. I know she’s getting on a bit in gymnast years, but she’s clearly an all-time great and I’m desperate for her to pull off a gold… or five.