The Paris Dossier – Our greatest Games

Our mana wāhine have written the majority of New Zealand’s success stories at the 2024 Olympic Games – winning over 70 percent of the Kiwi medals.
Of the 20 medals the NZ Team bring home from Paris – each embedded with a chunk of the Eiffel Tower – female athletes have won 14.5 of them (the 0.5 is Erica Dawson’s bronze in the mixed-crew multihull with Micah Wilkinson).
Eight of the record 10 golds from these Olympics belong to women – the last earned on the final day by the newly-crowned queen of sprint, Ellesse Andrews. Compare that with when NZ collected eight golds at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and all were won by men.
Since then, the number of medals snared by New Zealand’s female athletes have increased with each Games. At the last Olympics in Tokyo, our women returned with 11 of the 20 Kiwi medals won (yes, New Zealand equalled their best-ever medal haul in Paris with the final Kiwi competitor, Ally Wollaston, picking up a gutsy bronze in cycling’s omnium early this morning).
The reason? Success breeds success. The better the results, the more funding that’s dished out – especially to athletes and teams who finish in the top eight at an Olympics or top six at a world champs. And there’s been significantly more investment in recent years into understanding how to specifically coach women.
An extra $2m in training grants will be poured into high performance athletes ahead of the next Olympics in LA.
New Zealand’s 10-gold and 20-medal total is the country’s finest ever – equalling the haul in Tokyo but ranking higher, given the seven golds achieved last time around. NZ finished 11th in Paris.
Dame Lisa Carrington now sits comfortably among the greatest summer and winter Olympic athletes in sporting history. Her commanding come-from-behind victory in the K1 500 on Saturday elevated her to another plane. Her third kayaking gold in Paris (after the K2 and K4 titles) was the eighth she’s now amassed across four Olympic Games.
It puts her on an equal footing with Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, American swimmer Matt Biondi and German dressage queen Isabell Werth, who won her eighth gold in Paris (her seventh Olympics). Another GOAT at these Games, Simone Biles, has won gymnastics gold seven times.
In her own right, Carrington’s three golds at Paris would put her 29th on the nations’ medal table.
And Carrington may not be done yet. The 35-year-old telling media after the race that pushed her to new limits mentally, physically and emotionally: “It’s pretty enticing to continue after this one.”
The Dame was on early Monday morning NZT named with slalom canoe gold medallist Finn Butcher as the New Zealand flag bearers for the Games’ closing ceremony.
It was fitting Lydia Ko was one of New Zealand’s last medallists in Paris – her gold at Le Golf National on Sunday morning completing her full set, and making her the first golfer, female or male, to win three medals at three Games. But that’s enough, the 27-year-old LPGA Hall of Famer says, revealing her Olympics days are over. Is a damehood just beyond the next fairway?
Triple medallist in Paris, cyclist Ellesse Andrews is almost certain to return for her third Olympics in Los Angeles. The 24-year-old nabbed New Zealand’s final medal of these Games just before midnight on Sunday (NZT), barely troubled in the women’s sprint to become a double Olympic champion.
Andrews – gold medallist in the keirin, silver medallist in the team sprint – simply overpowered last year’s world champion, British rider Emma Finucane, 2-0, in Sunday night’s individual sprint semifinal to set up a gold medal showdown with the world record holder, Germany’s Lea Friedrich.
It was the same story again in the final – the explosive Andrews needing just two of the best-of-three races to capture the fourth Olympic medal of her career. We’ve never seen a track cyclist quite like her.
“It’s been an amazing week, and the sprint competition is such a long one; it’s over three days. So to end the third day with a win is unbelievable,” she told Sky Sport on the inside of the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
“I’m really proud of the way I raced physically but also mentally; tactically, how I carried myself through the week to this final day.”
Aucklander Wollaston, who won silver in the team pursuit last week, was the final Kiwi competitor in Paris, contesting the demanding four-event omnium.
Wollaston sat in fifth after the scratch and tempo races, dropping to seventh after the elimination race, but still had a mathematical chance of making the podium going into the final points race.
She rode aggressively – lapping the field twice and winning a sprint – to move into silver medal position with 11 laps to go. Although she slipped back a place, she held onto bronze in the final sprint – incredible for an athlete whose Olympic campaign was in jeopardy earlier this year, having to undergo unexpected knee surgery.
New Zealand ended up winning five cycling medals in Paris – startlingly all by women.
In her first Olympic marathon, sole Kiwi runner Camille French struggled with stitch on a hot, hilly Paris course, finishing 60th (in 2h 37m 21s). She told Sky Sport she was cheered all the way around the course by locals who thought she was, well, French. But the gold medallist, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, has to be the outstanding track and field athlete of these Games (read Tim Murphy’s explanation below).
Our four Paris Dossier reporters pondered on their favourite memories from these Games.
Suzanne McFadden
Favourite Kiwi moment: One of the great ‘mum-backs’ in world sport – Brooke Francis and Lucy Spoors deciding to join forces and return to elite rowing straight after having children, then winning gold in the double sculls ahead of the reigning world and Olympic champions. Having their toddlers in the crowd – oblivious to their ‘Super-Mums’ achievements – was part of their success. Another Kiwi mum, Emma Twigg, winning silver in the single sculls the following day.
These may have been touted as the Gender-equal Games, and the first with a nursery in the Olympic village, but there’s still a way to go in fully supporting female athletes to resume their sporting careers with children alongside them.
Enduring memory of Paris: The ascendancy of our wāhine in New Zealand’s performances was astounding – but the emergence of the next generation was golden, too. Erika Fairweather (20) made four finals in the pool and came oh-so close to a podium placing; kayaking double gold medallist Alicia Hoskin and two of her K4 champion crewmates, Olivia Brett and Tara Vaughan, are still in their early 20s; at 25, shotput silver medallist Maddi Wesche’s credentials just skyrocketed.
Our most successful track cyclist ever, Ellesse Andrews, will only be 28 when the LA Olympics come around, and sevens co-captain Risi Pouri-Lane and phenom Jorja Miller will likely have a couple more Games ahead of them.
Tim Murphy
Favourite Kiwi moment: A New Zealand great, Lydia Ko, finally getting the Olympic glory her career and character thoroughly deserve.
Golf’s four-day fight meant Ko’s win was no out-of-the-blue shock, there was no record time, no nailbiting physical contest. But the sustained excellence and psychological control, all with a smile and sporting grace the envy of any sport at Paris marked Ko’s performance as all class. The fact it gave her the historic set of silver (Rio), bronze (Tokyo) and gold medals – and triggered her ascension into the LPGA’s Hall of Fame – made it my sweetest moment.
Enduring memories of Paris: The brown, suspiciously bacterial, River Seine; the ringing of the victory bell; the unfortunate protrusion of the French male pole vaulter.
And in the actual sports: Femke Bol’s sensational 400m to take the Netherlands from nowhere to gold in the mixed relay, Faith Kipyegon of Kenya’s almost inconceivable threepeat gold medal in the 1500m on the track in an Olympic record, and the Netherlands’ Sifan Hassan’s unforgettable gold in the women’s marathon, taking it in the last few hundred metres, in a Games record after watching her take bronze medals in the track 5000m and 10,000m. Truly awesome.
Sarah Cowley-Ross (on the ground in Paris)
Favourite Kiwi moment: Being inside Stade de France for the Black Ferns Sevens win was something very special. The energy in the Olympic stadium is crazy and in the final it was electric. To see Portia Woodman-Wickliffe and Tayla King bow out of the black jersey with a gold medal around their necks was the fairytale ending they deserved. Also a nod to captain Sarah Hirini – a remarkable return following ACL rupture seven months earlier. What a team. What a legacy. 
Enduring memory of Paris: It’s the crowds at Stade de France. They packed out the 70,000 seat stadium for every athletics session, with their flags flying, faces painted and they’ve given so much to the athletes. Whether it’s been acknowledging the popular Coup de Baton ceremony at the start of the session or cheering on athletes as they try to set world records – it’s been a real privilege to be back at the Olympics with the world there and the extraordinary atmosphere an Olympics conjures.
Adam Julian
Favourite Kiwi moment: Sarah Hirini’s stoic and exhaustive charge with a shattered face to set up Stacey Waaka for the gold medal-winning try in the Olympic Sevens final against Canada is perhaps the most iconic moment of Hirini’s storied career. The Black Ferns Sevens’ path to the final was so easy that the torrid decider definitely made the gold medal feel more worthy.  
And watching Dame Lisa Carrington win her eighth gold medal in less than two minutes while waiting for traffic to clear on a roundabout curb in Waikiki, Perth. Delays meant the phone had to be employed.
Enduring memory of Paris: Expansion of geographical knowledge, introduction to compelling new sports and the push for stretching the possibilities of athletic achievement as far as they can go remain the biggest drawcard of the Olympics. Stories of excellence, valour and overcoming extraordinary adversity make the Olympics the biggest goldmine for reporters.
“Free Afghan women” – three words printed on the outfit of refugee athlete Manizha Talash led to her being retrospectively disqualified from the breaking competition yesterday. Talash, who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban retook power in 2021, was deemed to have breached rule 50 of the Olympic Charter. How ridiculous. Even more absurd, only in 2024 could there be an international furore over what is a male and a female.
High jumper Hamish Kerr won one of New Zealand’s greatest and rarest gold medals – in a field event at the athletics – in a gruelling jump-off with American Shelby McEwen after both men had made 2.36m but couldn’t make the final height of 2.38m.
The pair declined to share the gold medal, proceeding to attempt again the 2.36m level and moving down to 2.34m where McEwen missed and Kerr triumphed at the first go. Kerr’s Olympic gold is the first by a Kiwi man in a field event, and follows his victory in the world indoor championships.
“To do it the way I did it was just amazing,” Kerr said. “It was crazy.”
Cyclist Sam Dakin finished a creditable eighth in the men’s keirin in the final session of competition late Sunday night at the velodrome, pipped in the race-off for seventh but proud of his performance.
And weightlifter David Liti also took eighth place in the men’s super heavyweight division, Liti lifted a personal best total of 415kg. In the snatch he got 178kg, 182kg and 184kg. In the clean and jerk he got 224kg and 231kg and missed with 235kg.
10 GOLD:
Black Ferns Sevens – women’s sevens
Brooke Francis and Lucy Spoors – women’s double sculls
Finn Butcher – men’s kayak cross
Dame Lisa Carrington, Alicia Hoskin, Olivia Brett and Tara Vaughan – women’s K4 500 canoe sprint
Ellesse Andrews – women’s keirin
Dame Lisa Carrington and Alicia Hoskins – women’s K2 500
Dame Lisa Carrington – women’s K1 500
Lydia Ko – women’s golf
Hamish Kerr – men’s high jump
Ellesse Andrews – women’s sprint
7 SILVER:
Hayden Wilde – men’s triathlon
Logan Ullrich, Ollie Maclean, Tom Murray, Matt Macdonald – Men’s coxless four
Isaac McHardie and Will McKenzie – men’s 49er skiff
Emma Twigg – women’s single sculls
Ellesse Andrews, Rebecca Petch and Shaane Fulton – women’s team sprint
Nicole Shields, Emily Shearman, Ally Wollaston, Bryony Botha – women’s team pursuit
Maddi Wesche – women’s shotput
3 BRONZE:
Phoebe Spoors, Jackie Gowler, Davina Waddy and Kerri Williams – women’s coxless four
Erica Dawson and Micah Wilkinson – Nacra mixed multihull
Ally Wollaston – women’s omnium