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Here Are Some of the Most Unforgettable Moments of the Paris Olympics
A look at the best of the Summer Games, from Celine Dion's opening high note to golden performances by stars like Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles ... and chocolate muffins.
Vive la XXXIIIe Olympiade!
Over the past two weeks, the 2024 Paris Games have supplied many inspiring moments and memories for the history books on and off the field. Kicking off with an Opening Ceremony on July 27 that featured the athletes from more than 200 countries floating down the Seine River on boats and showcasing those same stars as they excelled on land – and through the air in the case of events like the high jump, diving, and the pole vault.
These Olympics have given us the triumphant returns of Team USA legends like gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Katie Ledecky, along with a new generation of viral icons like rugby star Ilona Maher and the self-proclaimed “Muffin Man.” A new-look U.S. Women’s National Soccer team excelled, as did a 37-year-old tennis legend in his final chance to cement his legacy.
RELATED: Here Are All the U.S. Medal Winners at the 2024 Paris Olympics
Here are some of the NBC Insider team's favorite moments from these Summer Games:
Celine Dion Makes Her Triumphant Return at the Opening Ceremony
The Olympics Opening Ceremony closed on a high note – literally. Celine Dion, making an emotional return to the stage after a four-year absence due to a struggle with an autoimmune neurological disease, launched the 2024 Paris Games with a rousing rendition of Edith Piaf's “Hymne A L’Amour.” And she belted out the ballad on the biggest of stages: The base of the Eiffel Tower. The 56-year-old French Canadian singer has been battling Stiff Person’s Syndrome, a condition that impairs both her physical movement and causes muscle spasms in her throat that affects her range. On July 27, however, nothing could stop her from delivering a performance for the ages.
"Bob the Capcatcher" Dives into Viral Fame
Maybe it was the floral speedo. Maybe it was the dad bod. Maybe it was the odd image of a lifeguard diving into the pool to retrieve Team USA swimmer Emma Weber’s bathing cap during a now legendary moment at a July 29 preliminary race. When the sunken cap delayed the start of the fifth and final heat of the women’s 100m breaststroke, the unidentified lifeguard dove in to rescue it as cameras rolled. NBC Sports commentator Amy Van Ryan, herself a six-time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, came up with a flash of inspirational dry wit to dub the good swimmarian, “Bob the Capcatcher.” The nickname stuck, a viral sensation was born, and a wave of memes flooded social media.
The "Muffin Man" Gets a 11/10 Rating as a Social Media Sensation
Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen didn’t medal at the Paris Olympics, but he did come away with comedy gold. The 27-year-old became a viral sensation courtesy of his hilarious TikTok video tributes to the chocolate muffins served at the Olympic Village, or “Choccy muffins,” as he calls them. He cemented his own nickname courtesy of one of his TikToks which used audio of the Muffin Man line from the movie, “Shrek.” He rated the muffins, an “insane 11/10.” NBC Insider rates his content at 5/5 stars.
Men's Gymnastics Finals Looks Like a Job for "Clark Kent"
Though the mild-mannered, bespectacled Stephen Nedoroscik looks more like Clark Kent, he sure had a Superman moment during the men’s team gymnastics finals. Biding his time as teammates Brody Malone, Paul Juda, Frederick Richard, and Asher Hong shined on their events, Nedoroscik never lost focus as he awaited his lone event – the pommel horse. When his turn arrived, the 25-year-old delivered a nearly flawless routine, helping Team USA win the bronze medal, the first Olympic medal for American men in gymnastics in 16 years, in the process. Nedoroscik later took home an individual bronze medal in the pommel horse, as well as a week’s worth of Clark Kent memes.
U.S. Women’s Rugby Upsets Australia to Wins the Bronze
Australia is one of the dominant powers in the sport of rugby. The United States is most certainly not. Yet on July 30, the U.S. Women’s Team stunned the sporting world with a last second run by Alex Sedrick and a successful conversion to win the bronze medal in the Rugby 7's. The win is a major boost for the sport to gain traction on this side of the Pacific (or Atlantic, for that matter.)
The breakout star of the team was Iona Maher, a battering ram of a runner on the pitch and a font of enthusiasm off it. When the 27-year-old wasn’t hobnobbing with the likes of Tom Brady, she was a joyous advocate for the growth of rugby in the U.S. And when online trolls criticized her weight and body type, she leaned into the scrum and championed women of all body types.
Katie Ledecky Sets U.S. Swimming Record for Gold
Katie Ledecky is leaving Paris with four more medals and several all-time Olympic records. The 27-year-old swimmer added to the collection on her mantle with two golds (800m and 1500m freestyle), a silver (4x200 freestyle relay) and a bronze (400m freestyle). In the process, Ledecky officially became the most decorated female Olympic swimmer of all time and the most decorated female American in Olympic history. Ledecky also tied Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina for most gold medals won by a woman with nine.
Team USA Women’s Gymnastics Team Reclaims the Gold
American gymnasts Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, and Jade Carey had a lot to prove going into the women’s all-around team final at the Paris Games. Team USA was coming off a disappointing silver medal in the 2020 Tokyo Games. There were questions swirling around Biles’s ability to match her earlier success at the age of 27, especially after a struggle during the previous Olympics with a mental condition called “the twisties,” in which a gymnast loses special awareness and is susceptible to dangerous falls. Lee, too, overcame significant health issues to get back to the big stage. All questions were squashed once the competition started with a true team effort for the ages, including a statement vault routine by Carey and a performance on the uneven bars that showed whey Lee was reigning all-around Olympic champion.
Appropriately enough, Biles clinched the gold for Team USA with an electrifying floor routine that also clinched her status as the most decorated American gymnast of all time. Biles nicknamed the squad, “The Golden Girls,” after the classic sitcom about a group of senior women, as a nod to the team’s status as being the oldest winners in Olympic gymnastics history.
(Hezly Rivera, an Olympic rookie at just 16, was also part of the medal-winning team, but did not compete in the event.)
Simone Biles Aces "Redemption Tour" With All-Around Gold
Biles cemented her status as the greatest American gymnast in Olympic history with three more medals in addition to the team gold, including a gold in the vault and a silver in the floor. Perhaps the 27-year-old’s finest moment, though, came with a dominant performance in the all-around competition in which she closed out with a floor routine for the ages that beat silver-medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil by a 1.199 margin. (U.S. teammate Suni Lee, who won the gold in 2020, took the bronze this time around.)
What made Biles’s performance and return to the top of the podium in the individual all-around event which she won at the 2016 Rio Games was that it marked a self-proclaimed “redemption tour” after being unable to defend her title at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics because of the aforementioned twisties. She became the first two-time gold medalist in the all-around competition since Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia managed the feat in 1964/1968.
Snoop and Flavor Flav Prove Medal-Worthy Cheerleaders
Rap icons Snoop Dogg and Flavor Flav have gone from hardcore to big old softies. Snoop, 52, has shined on the world stage as both a correspondent for NBC and an Olympic torchbearer. Along the way, Snoop racked up some of the most viral moments of the Paris Games, from dancing with the Team USA women’s gymnastics team to swimming with Michael Phelps to sporting equestrian garb and helmets with his good friend, Martha Stewart. BBC dubbed him “America’s cheerleader,” and NBC has announced that they would like him to return to the post for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Public Enemy's Flavor Flav, meanwhile, signed on as the official hype-man for the Team USA Water Polo squads and has been taking those patriotic duties very seriously. When one U.S. track and field team member Veronica Fraley took to social media to lament that she couldn’t afford to pay her rent, the 65-year-old teamed up with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian to pay the bill.
USWNT Conjures Extra-Time Magic
When games get to crunch time, it seems the U.S. women's soccer team excels, coming up with extra-time goals in back-to-back matches to book a place in the gold medal match.
It took 106 minutes and a goal for the ages, but striker Trinity Rodman managed to lead the U.S. to a 1-0 victory over archrival Japan in the quarterfinal round. The 22-year-old Washington Spirit star and daughter of NBA legend Dennis Rodman juked to beat a defender and then drilled a shot with her left leg from a sharp angle that curled into the top far corner of the goal.
In the semifinal against Japan, the game was in its 95th minute when Sophia Smith narrowly beat out a German defender to get on the end of a through ball at the edge of the 18-yard-box and slot it past the goalkeeper, a strike that held up for another 1-0 win and a place in the finals.
All in all, a fantastic tournament for new coach Emma Hayes and a squad full of young players that marks a changing of the guard for the program.
Noah Lyles Leans Into Photo Finish for the 100M Gold
He got off on the wrong foot, but Noah Lyles ended up winning with his right shoulder. Overcoming the slowest start among the field of the 100m race, the three-time World Champion sprinter cut the gap to edge out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson, who notched the fastest time in the semifinal round earlier in the day, by five-thousandths of a second. They were so close that a photo finish was required to crown a winner. The difference turned out to be the 27-year-old Lyles' shoulder dip to move his torso across the finish line before Thompson did
A Pair of Sharpshooters Take Aim at Stardom
A pair of sharpshooters gave us plenty of ammunition for some great memes. South Korea’s Kim-Ye-ji won a silver medal in the 10-meter air pistol women’s event – and looked like a boss while doing it. Between her futuristic lenses and nonchalant body language upon making her winning shot, the 31-year-old drew comparisons to an action star across social media. Turkish sharpshooter Yusuf Dikeç, meanwhile, went for a different approach during the air pistol mixed team event. Dikec eschewed special lenses other than his not simple eyeglasses, opted for a regular T-shirt over safety gear, and fired off his silver medal winning shot while putting his other hand in his pants pocket.
Tennis Star Djokovic Earns Long Elusive Olympic Gold
The winningest male tennis player in Grand Slam history added the one piece of major hardware missing from his collection. Serbia’s Novak Djokovic beat rival Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, 7-6, 7-6, to win his first Olympic gold medal. The 37-year-old Djokovic was overcome with emotion after becoming only the fifth tennis player to notch a “golden slam” – joining Steffi Graff (1988), Andre Agassi (1999), Rafael Nadal (2010) and Serena Williams (2012) as the players to win all four Grand Slam events and an Olympic gold. Djokovic won the bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but left the empty handed in each of the next three Summer Games. At his age, Paris may have been his last shot at Olympic glory.
It's Tout Le Mondo in the Pole Vault Record Books
American-born Mondo Duplantis had already clinched the gold medal for Sweden in the pole vault finals when he decided that wasn’t good enough for him. With his remaining attempts, he first set a new Olympic record of 6.10 meters, and then after two unsuccessful tries, he executed a flawless vault to clear the bar for a new world record of 6.25 meters. That is the ninth time Mondo, now a two-time Olympic champion, broke his own world record.
Quincy Hall Makes Amazing Comeback to Win Gold in 400M
Heading into the final stretch of the 400m finals in fourth place, American sprinter Quincy Hall found another gear. The 26-year-old passed three other runners to cross the finish line four hundreds of a second ahead of Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith to take the gold. “I was just thinking, ‘Get home, sir. Get home, sir.’” Hall told NBC Sports after the race. Hall’s time of 43.40 seconds was a personal best, good enough to lead the U.S. to its first Olympic gold in the event since the 2008 Beijing Games.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone Blows Away the Competition
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more dominant performance at the Paris Games than Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who successfully defended her gold medal in the women’s 400m hurdle. Not only that, but she obliterated the world record in the process, which she, of course, owned. Here’s an eye-popping stat, as noted by Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Eisenberg: McLaughlin-Levrone’s blazingly fast time of 50.37 seconds was better than 16 of the 24 women running in the 400m open semifinals – a race where you don’t have to also, you know, jump over things.
