Athletics events begin today at the Stade de France. Will it witness a new world record? Seeing athletes celebrate a world record at the Games is rare, but it does happen: three were broken at Tokyo 2020 and Rio de Janeiro 2016, and four at London 2012 and Beijing 2008.
Below we show the events where the records are closest to being broken. To do this, we have calculated the distance between the best recent marks (since 2023) and the current records. To compare them, we express them as a percentage.
The charts above show the best times recorded since January 2023. At the top are the disciplines where these times are closest to the world record.
The closest records
In 11 events – six women’s and five men’s – the world record has been achieved in the last year and a half. These are disciplines where the record-holders will be on the track and could push themselves to beat their own records in Paris.
This is the case in the women’s high jump, where Yaroslava Mahuchikh will try to win gold and perhaps raise the world record by a few centimetres. The Ukrainian jumped 2.10 just two weeks ago in Paris, seven centimetres more than her best rival in this period. Another favourite is the Swede Armand Duplantis in the pole vault, who will try to repeat the gold in Tokyo and improve his record from last April. It would not be surprising if he were to achieve this, he has been breaking his own records for the last two years.
There is no doubt that there will be athletes in Paris capable of breaking these records, but that will not be enough. The weather conditions and strategy will also play a role. Having a gold medal within reach can make athletes try to secure it and not rush a few centimetres in the long jump or shot put to avoid a void.
Other events where it will be difficult to see new records are the long distance races. Many of the records are achieved in one-day events, where the fittest athletes go after the record and are even accompanied by pacers – companions who are in charge of maintaining the ideal pace for kilometres to beat the stopwatch.
The records you probably won’t see fall
In other disciplines, current athletes are far from breaking records. Some have not broken them for decades: in the men’s javelin throw, the best mark in recent months is more than eight metres below the record set by Czech Jan Železný in 1996.
Even older is the women’s shot put record, set by Russian Natalia Lisovskaya in 1986. Her 22.63 metres is two metres more than the best mark of the last year and a half. Eight other world records have been held since the 1980s. Some of them are still under the shadow of doping.
One of these decades-old records was the men’s shot put. No one had come close to Randy Barnes’ mark in 30 years, until Ryan Crouser broke it in June 2021. The American improved that mark in 2023 and is the favourite to take home gold in Paris.
When are the records most likely to be seen?
In the table below you can see which finals are taking place each day and how close the marks from the last few months are to the world record.
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