The $8.2bn Paris Olympics were an exuberant celebration of the spirit of sports.

The stunning opening ceremony along the river Seine saw Aya Nakamura, the sumptuous Malian-French singer influenced by Afrobeats and Caribbean zouk — who had been widely vilified by racist Gallic politicians and talking heads before the Games as not really being “French” — steal the show with a glittering performance, spoilt only by a French military band prancing around her.

The real significance of these Games was the way they exposed the role the Black Atlantic — the citizens of the European-led transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries — has played in shaping global culture through migration. Africa and its global diaspora in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe dominated these Olympics, as they have previous Games.

These global Africans are true symbols of the globalisation of cultural identities. Athletics is the jewel in the Olympic crown, and citizens of the Black Atlantic triumphed in much of the track and field competition. Global Africans helped the US, Britain, Jamaica and Canada finish in the top seven nations in athletics, while Kenya took second place. The US finally ended Jamaica’s 16-year dominance of the sprints.

African-American sprinter Noah Lyles won the closest Olympic 100m final, before seeking in his bronze-winning 200m race to steal the thunder of Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo — who became the first African to win a sprint gold, in a continental record — by dramatically announcing that he had Covid-19.

It was an emotional victory for the humble Tebogo, who dedicated the victory to his recently deceased mother: the pillar behind much of his success. Lyles learnt the hard way that it takes more than trash-talking to enter into the pantheon of global African Olympians such as Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, who each won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin and 1984 Los Angeles games.

Three Afro-Cubans — Jordan DÍaz Fortun (Spain), Pedro Pichardo (Portugal), and Andy DÍaz Hernández (Italy) — swept the triple jump medals. Jamaican discus-thrower Roke Stona won gold in an Olympic record. Ugandan 10,000m runner Joshua Cheptegei and Ethiopian marathoner Tamirat Tola broke the Olympic record, as did the African-American 4 x 400m quartet, with Rai Benjamin (400m hurdles) and Quincy Hall (400m) also bagging individual golds. Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi stormed to victory in the 800m. African-American three-time 110m hurdles world champion Grant Holloway finally won Olympic gold.

Outstanding performances among the women included Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon’s historic third consecutive Olympic gold in the 1,500m (a new games record), adding a silver in the 5,000m behind Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet, with Ethiopian-Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan — who later broke the Olympic marathon record in clinching gold — winning bronze. Senegalese-Belgian heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam similarly won three consecutive Olympic golds.

African American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone broke her own 400m hurdles world record, and 100m sprinter Julien Alfred (St Lucia), 400m runner Marieldy Paulino (Dominican Republic) and triple-jumper Thea LaFond (Dominica) all won their small Caribbean islands’ first gold medals. Harvard-educated Jamaican-American biologist Gabby Thomas won gold in the 200m, as well as in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays. Kenyan-born Bahraini 3,000m steeplechaser Winfred Yavi won gold in an Olympic record. Nigerian-German shot-putter Yemisi Ogunleye won gold on her last throw.

Elsewhere, this was the Games in which African-American Simone Biles — among the greatest Olympic gymnasts with seven gold medals — achieved redemption. After having had to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics with a very public mental breakdown, she won three golds and one silver in Paris. Algerian Kaylia Nemour won Africa’s first Olympic gymnastics gold. SA’s Tatjana Smith won a swimming gold. The US’s men and women “Dream Teams” predictably swept the basketball, with LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant memorably rolling back the years.

 Professor Adekeye Adebajo is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.

The article was first published in Business Day South Africa on 19 August 2024.

​Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Pretoria.