2022 says goodbye with more than 100 qualifiers for the next Olympic Games

In the coming year, tens of thousands of athletes will try to qualify in 32 sports for the 329 events that will be held in Paris 2024, with a total of 206 National Olympic Committees represented, in addition to the Refugee Olympic Team. Triathlon was the sport that inaugurated the road to Paris 2024. It was at the World Mixed Relay Championship, held last June in Canada, where the first qualified athletes were officially confirmed. That competition offered the highest-ranked nation two tickets per gender, as long as the winning team did not have guaranteed places. And that’s exactly what happened in Montreal. The French team, led by Vincent Luis and Cassandre Beaugrand, was crowned world champion and, since France already had two places guaranteed because it was the host nation, those who celebrated in a big way were the British, who had crossed the finish line in second place.

Gymnastics, a discipline that crowns 18 Olympic champions among its three branches, has already defined the first national committees that will be represented in the French capital in 2024. In artistic gymnastics, the team competition at the Liverpool World Championship determined the rankings of the United States, Great Britain and Canada among women; and China, Japan and Great Britain among men. For its part, the rhythmic had its World Championship in Sofia, where Italy, Germany and Bulgaria fastened their Olympic ticket in the individual category; while in the teams the qualifiers were the Bulgarian, the Israeli and the Spanish. The 2023 World Cups will be an opportunity for the vast majority of gymnasts and, in the case of the Americas, the Pan American Games in Santiago will represent an unprecedented opportunity for countries that have not been able to seal their place in the very demanding first level of the world.

In team sports, handball, football and basketball also had their first pre-Olympic events. Norway, the European women’s handball champion, was the first country to qualify outside the French national teams, reigning Olympic champions and with a place reserved for hosting. In a few days, the Men’s Adult World Championship in Poland will award a place to the champion team. Football, which will start at the Olympic Games on July 24, two days before the Opening Ceremony, distributed five places during 2022. Women’s football confirmed Brazil and Colombia through the Copa América, and the United States through the Monterrey World Cup. In addition to them are the places of the two men’s finalist teams in the CONCACAF Under-20 World Championship (United States and the Dominican Republic). In basketball, to the surprise of almost no one, the United States swept the Women’s World Championship and is, together with France, the first confirmed team in the discipline. The next Olympic qualifier will be the 2023 women’s EuroBasket, June 15-25th in Israel and Slovenia.

Shooting is the sport that currently has the most athletes qualified for the next Olympic Games. In total, 170 men and 170 women will compete in this discipline in Paris 2024 and there are already 76 confirmed. As the host country, France has 12 places reserved and throughout 2022, another 64 places were added during different ISSF Championships designated as pre-Olympic. Cuba, the United States, the Czech Republic, Norway, Ukraine, Poland, India, China, Greece, Ukraine and Brazil are some of the countries that achieved the classification goal.

The equestrian also took its first steps towards the Parisian dream of competing at the Palace of Versailles. The jump added its first qualified countries on the Stutteri Ask Stadium circuit in Herning, Denmark, during the World Championship of the specialty. The three world medalist countries (Sweden, the Netherlands and Great Britain) together with Ireland, Belgium and Germany will be at the next Games with three athletes for each team. During the same World Cup in Herning, six training tickets were distributed, which were handed out in the hands of Denmark, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States. Finally, in the full equestrian competition, seven finishers were added during the World Championship in Pratoni del Vivaro, Italy. The next qualifier is the FEI Olympic Ranking, which will begin on January 1 and will run until December 31, 2023.

Surfing also has two confirmed places, which will be in the Olympic program for the second time in its history, after the event it represented in Tokyo 2020. Japan’s men’s team and the United States women’s team secured the first two spots at the 2022 ISA World Surfing Games. The silver medalist in Tokyo 2020, Kanoa Igarashi, won the men’s individual title, while Kirra Pinkerton did the same for the United States in the women’s category. The next Olympic qualifier is the WSL Championship Tour 2023, from January 29 to September 15 of the year that begins.

2023 will also represent the beginning of the qualifying window for the two sports that award the most medals at the Olympic Games: both athletics -except for the marathon that began its process on November 1- and swimming will soon begin to be confirmed for Paris 2024. In athletics, you can reach it by way of the minimum mark required by World Athletics (50 percent) or by the position in the world ranking of each event. The qualifying period for the 10,000 meters, combined tests, running and relays begins on December 31 and lasts until June 30, 2024; and for the remaining tests from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024. In the case of swimming, for all individual events, the Olympic Qualification Time (former mark A) and the Olympic Consideration Time (former mark B) will be taken into account. Standard registration times can only be achieved between May 1, 2023 and June 23, 2024, based on a test schedule that will be defined by World Aquatics.