With just 12 days until Paris 2024 gets underway, Team GB have confirmed the final number of athletes representing the country at this summer’s Olympic Games, with 327 athletes set to compete across 24 different sports.
Today also marks the first day where Team GB athletes will begin making their journeys to Paris, with athletes from archery, boxing and gymnastics amongst the first to board the Eurostar train.
Of the class of 2024, 169 will be returning Olympians, 74 of which have already won an Olympic medal.
These returning Olympians also feature a select group of 18 athletes who competed at London 2012. Among them are two triple Olympic champions: gymnast Max Whitlock and equestrian Charlotte Dujardin, who won two dressage gold medals in London, and will become Team GB’s most decorated female Olympian ever if she captures another medal this summer.
Whitlock, the reigning Olympic pommel horse champion with gold medals in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, will hope to become the first gymnast to win three gold medals in the same discipline across three separate Olympic Games when he competes in the Bercy Arena in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, 158 athletes will potentially make their Games debuts in Paris, including 51-year-old Andy Macdonald, Team GB’s first ever male Olympic skateboarder, whose contemporaries this summer will be 35 years his junior: the teenage duo of Sky Brown and Lola Tambling, both aged 16.
Brown made history at Tokyo 2020 as the youngest Team GB athlete to compete at a summer Olympic Games at just 13 years old, and secured Team GB’s first ever Olympic skateboarding medal, capturing a bronze medal in the park event.
Three years on, Brown is still the team’s youngest Olympian, having turned 16 earlier this month, and will be one of 14 teenage athletes competing in Paris this summer for Team GB. As was also the case in Tokyo, equestrian Carl Hester will be the oldest athlete in the squad at this year’s Games, at 57 years old, while becoming only the second Team GB athlete to compete at seven different Olympic Games, alongside Nick Skelton.
Team GB’s Chef de Mission, Mark England said: “After three years of intense preparation, it
brings me immense pleasure to confirm our final team for Paris 2024. We are incredibly excited about this supremely talented group of athletes, and we have full confidence they will all do this country proud this summer.”
Team GB made history at Tokyo 2020, featuring more female athletes than male athletes in a summer Olympic Games for the first time ever. This will be the case once more in Paris, with 172 women and 155 men all selected to represent Team GB later this month.
Of the 172 female athletes, 10 mothers have been selected as part of Team GB this summer, including skeet shooter Amber Rutter, who is set to compete just four months after giving birth in April to her son, Tommy.
Fittingly, Paris is also the city where female athletes first competed at the Olympic Games back in 1900. One of 22 female athletes to have competed in 1900, it was Charlotte Cooper who became Great Britain’s first ever female Olympic champion, winning a gold medal in tennis.
With 64 athletes representing Team GB in athletics this summer, they take by far the largest squad that will travel to Paris, followed by rowing (41) and hockey (32). Weightlifting will take the fewest athletes with Tokyo silver medallist Emily Campbell the sole representative for the sport in Paris.