Olympic Dreams: Australia's Journey in Paris 2024

You're listening to English with an Aussie, the #1 podcast spoken entirely in slow English.

Welcome everybody! My name is Adriana, an experienced English teacher from Down Under. I have created this podcast for international students, professionals and intermediate ESL speakers who are planning their new lives in Australia. Each episode I will share an interesting aspect about the Australian culture. In addition to this, you will find many grammatical lessons to help you start speaking like a native in no time!

Can you believe the Olympics came and went just like that? On July 26th 2024, the city of Paris was transformed into a global sports village and welcomed 461 of our very own Aussie athletes. Stay tuned while we discuss Australia's road to the Olympics, the medal tally, and how Australia weighed up against the other countries. Finally, I'll share my Top 3 highlights that captured the hearts of fans across the world. 

Chapters

• 0:00 An Introduction to Australia's Campaign
• 2:36 The Lead Up to The Olympics: The Qualifiers and Opening Ceremony
• 9:00 How Australia Weighed Up: Medal Tally and World Records
• 11:38 Promotion: The English With An Aussie ESL Community Page
• 14:04 My Top 3 Aussie Highlights!
• 20:50 A review of the lesson and what's coming up next episode.

Transcript

🇦🇺 Olympic Dreams: Australia’s Journey in Paris 2024 🇦🇺

Episode 010 | #EnglishwithanAussie

HOOK:
Can you believe the Olympics came and went just like that? (click). On July 26th 2024, the  city of Paris, was transformed into a global sports village and welcomed 461 of our very own Aussie’s athletes. Stay tuned while we discuss how the Australians weighed up! 

JINGLE:
Hello everybody and welcome. I’m your host Adriana, and you're listening to English with an Aussie, the no. 1 podcast spoken entirely in slow English.

INTRODUCTION:
In today’s episode we’ll be discussing how the Aussies went in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Our athletes competed in 42 events from July 26th to August 11th with ex-cyclist and 2-time gold medalist Anna Meares selected as the team's spokesperson. Today we’ll be talking about all things Olympics. We’ll first cover the Australian team's road to the Olympics and how they were able to qualify for almost all of its events. We’ll then take a look at the medal tally and how Australia performed in comparison to other countries. Finally, I’ll be taking you through the highlights of the campaign and some let’s say… controversial events. So sit back and let me be your guide through this incredible journey. Well, without further adieu, let’s jump in! 

THE PREPARATIONS:
In the lead up to the Paris Olympics, tens of thousands of hopefuls competed in more than 3,000 Olympic qualifiers to secure their spot. But it’s not just as easy as going to one place and qualifying. There is no one general rule for every sport or discipline. But there’s no need to panic, I’ll do my best to explain it all. Let’s first talk about team sports which make up a majority of the events. Take Basketball for instance - If your country is hosting the Olympics you will automatically qualify. Our Australian basketball teams were eligible due to their wins during the World Cup and Olympic Qualifying tournaments. Our Rugby 7s squads on the other hand were chosen based on their world ranking or winning 1 out of 6 Olympic qualifying tournaments. As far as Track & Field events go, there are 2 pathways an athlete must go down. Pathway number 1 - they must be within the World Athletics Ranking and pathway 2 - they must meet an entry standard. This means they must run faster, jump higher or throw further than a specific agreed number.  So if you ran the women's 100m qualifying sprint at a pace slower than 11.07 seconds you would not be eligible to go to the olympics. Pretty brutal right?

Well, Australia qualified for an astounding 42 out of the 45 possible sports in the Paris 2024 programme - with fencing, handball and volleyball being the only exceptions.  Australia also qualified for brand new, never before seen disciplines such as kiteboarding, breakdancing and mixed team race walking. Australia is incredibly proud of its Olympic legacy, being among the countries with the highest qualification rate. In addition to this - Australia has secured gold, silver and bronze medals in all 29 editions of the Summer Olympic Games, one thing that not many other countries can compare to. 

For the first time in the history of the Summer Olympic games, the Opening Ceremony was held outside of a stadium! Instead, the traditional parade of athletes took place in boats along the River Seine, passing the most iconic Parisian landmarks. The parade began at 7.30pm, with sunset falling over the stunning city, and The Flame was lit at 11.30pm. For people outside of Europe, like us Aussie’s, this would have happened around 7.30am in the morning. The Opening Ceremony had it all, from electrifying performances from top global artists like Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, to incredible light shows illuminating the night sky. 80 athletes from Australia entered the ceremony by boat wearing green blazers which had the names of all 301 Australian Olympic Champions. Ten Indigenous athletes were also present on the boat, including 5-time Olympic basketballer Patty Mills and Conor Nicholas who would become Australia’s first Indigenous sailing Olypmian. Canoeist Jessica Fox and Hockey star Eddie Ockenden beared the Australian flags at the front of the boat. 

HOW AUSTRALIA WEIGHED UP:
The Aussies finished their Olympic campaign with 18 gold medals, 19 silver medals and 16 bronze - a whopping total of 53! Australia finished up in 4th position overall, trailing just behind Japan in 3rd and China in 2nd. It’s no surprise that The United States of America wiped the floor with 126 medals - doubling the Australian’s efforts. In 5th place we saw the Olympics host country France with 64 medals and my current home country Italy sitting in a cool 9th place with 40 medals. However, despite the other countries, Australia were soooooo close to setting a new world record for the most number of medals won at a Summer Olympics. In the year 2000, Australia hosted the Sydney Olympics, and won 58 medals on home soil! 16 gold medals, 25 silver medals and 17 Bronze. Being that it was hosted in Australia many more athletes were eligible to qualify meaning - of course, more chances to win. Yes, unfortunately, this year the Australians fell 5 medals short of their record, however there is always Los Angeles in 2028 to make up for it!

PROMOTION:
Did you know that every episode has its own supporting resources? Join the English With An Aussie Podcast Community on Facebook and turn this episode into an English lesson! Every episode comes with a full transcript and a glossary of terms to help with your comprehension. Along with the resource package, you'll find conversational videos, interactive posts and people just like you, ready to connect and practise their English. The best part - it’s all free! So, what are you waiting for? Start speaking like an Aussie now!

Before we dive into my favourite moments of the Paris Summer Olympics 2024, let’s go over what events made up Australia’s 18 gold medals. Beginning in alphabetical order we have:

Athletics with 1 gold

BMX Racing with 1 gold

Canoe Slalom with 3 gold

Road Cycling with 1 gold

Sailing with 1 gold

Skateboarding with 2 gold

Swimming with a whopping 7 gold medals

Tennis with 1 gold.

and finally,

Track Cycling with 1 gold

It’s definitely no surprise that our country has some incredibly talented swimmers! In fact, after checking the medal tally - Australia won the most medals in swimming out of all the other countries - with 7 gold medals, 8 silver and 3 bronze - a total of 18. The only other country to come anywhere close to the Australian swimmers was Canada who won a total of 8 medals consisting of 3 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze. 

HIGHLIGHTS:
Alright everyone, strap yourselves in for my Top 3 Aussie moments that captured the hearts of fans across the world!

#1 

Arisa Trew, a 14-year old skateboarder from Cairns, broke 68 years of Australian Olympic history becoming the youngest participant to win a gold medal! Arisa won first place in the women’s park skateboarding final, after sitting in bronze position going into her final run. Arisa was also the first women’s skateboarder to land a trick called the “900” - which is two and a half full rotations in mid air! As you can imagine Arisa’s family and friends went nuts when she landed it. Her mesmerising medal performance saw a blow up in social media and news reports across the country. Despite her huge achievements, Arisa was happy to go back to school and spend time with her friends. She promised to keep skating and pushing herself to further limits in the future. 

#2

Australian swimmer Ariane Titmus went into the 200m freestyle as the current world record holder, but it was her teammate Mollie O’Callaghan who left Paris with the gold medal! This was the showdown everyone was waiting for - Aussie versus Aussie. O’Callaghan started slow off the marks, and for the majority of the race it looked like Titmus had it in the bag. In the last lap of the race, both girls were side by side with nothing but a hair to keep them apart. The crowd went wild. All of a sudden Mollie O’Callaghan turned on her rockets, summoned every ounce of energy left in her tank and shot past Ariarnewith just seconds to go. At the end of the race Australia won not ONLY a gold medal, but also a silver medal. The two girls could not contain their emotions and both burst into tears. This result marks the second time in history this has happened since Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett way back in 2004. 

#3

36-year-old university lecturer Rachel Gunn - known to her fans as Raygun sent shockwaves across the globe with her creative and quirky performance in the Olympic Breakdancing scene. Raygun joined the stage in her green and gold Australian tracksuit performing such moves inspired by kangaroo hopping and water sprinklers. Raygun was confident and content with her routine - claiming her boyfriend, an ex-breakdancer, had been training her for many years before the event. Unfortunately the media did not enjoy her routine - calling it a ‘mockery to Australia’. After her performance many memes and viral videos were made, questioning her qualification and choices of moves in the performance. Rumours and criticism circulated until finally Raygun had enough and confronted the public stating ‘I knew I wasn't going to beat my competitors, so I decided to move differently and move artistically ... .I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics and only wanted to bring joy to the viewers. I didn’t realise it would open up the door to this much hate”. 

To sum up this episode, the Olympics was quite the emotional rollercoaster, filled with controversies, upsets and many world records to celebrate. All in all, I think it’s safe to say that Australia’s athletes - as always, displayed their incredible qualities of good sportsmanship and respect to all. Australia from the bottom of my heart, thank you for captivating our hearts and being strong role models for our youth and upcoming olympic participants. 

REFLECTIONS:
Well if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for sticking around. But as always, it’s time to say our goodbyes. Just to remind you, today's episode was all about the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. We first talked about the ways in which our Aussie’s qualified for the games and how they debuted in the opening ceremony. We then discussed the medal tally, and how Australia weighed up against the other countries. Finally, I revealed my 3 favourite moments of the Olympic games and why they touched the hearts of people across the globe. Next episode, I’ll be reaching out to my Aussie listeners on what they eat for breakfast. So if you’d like to get involved and feature on my next episode, sign up to my Facebook group or simply send me an email at TeacherAdriana1992@gmail.com telling me what your breakfast usually consists of. Once again, thank you everybody. You've been listening to English with an Aussie. 

VOCABULARY

'weighed up’  : to form an opinion based on the abilities of somebody or something

spokesperson : a person who speaks as the representative of others in a professional way (usually a team)

campaign : an organised course of action to achieve a shared goal.

discipline : knowledge or a skill that people have consistently trained for 

world ranking  : the list of the best players or teams created by an organisation

The Flame : a torch that is lit at the Olympics which symbolises the values of unity, strength, sportsmanship and continuity.

blazers : a formal coloured jacket 

wiped the floor’ : when you defeat your opposition in a competition or discussion. Usually by many points. 

mesmerising : when you capture the attention of somebody for a long period of time doing something wonderful.

had it in the bag’ : when you are certain you will win or achieve your goal

mockery : a ridiculous representation or imitation of something. Making a fool out of someone or something.

role model : a person looked to others as a good example.