Friday 28 June marks 28 days until the start of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris, France, from 26 July (opening ceremony) to 11 August.
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One of the major pieces of news in the past week has been African tennis star Ons Jabeur announcing that she will miss the Paris 2024 Olympics. The 29-year-old Tunisian is the highest-listed African and Arab tennis player in WTA and ATP rankings history.
The clay court season came to an end at the 2024 French Open and players are now set to spend the next few weeks playing on grass, which is a much faster and often slippery surface. Jabeur has explained that the change of surfaces would put her health at risk having been dealing with a niggling knee injury.
“After consulting with my medical team regarding attending the Olympics in Paris, we have decided that the quick change of surface and the body’s adaptation required would put my knee at risk and jeopardise the rest of my season,” Jabeur wrote on Twitter.
“Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympics. I have always loved representing my country in any competition, However, I must listen to my body and follow my medical team’s advice. Wishing my teammates [the best] in the Games, and I will be their biggest support."
Elsewhere, reigning Women's 100m world champion Sha’Carri Richardson has fired warning shots to rivals Shericka Jackson, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and Julien Alfred after qualifying for the Olympic Games during the USATF Olympic trials at the Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
Richardson won her heat with a time of 10.88, before impressing in the semifinal with another win, this time at 10.86. She then crushed in the final with a world leading time of 10.71 to win the race ahead of her teammates and training partners, Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha Terry.
Richardson believes the American trio could win all three medals for the 100m in Paris: “I feel like we have already done that… these trials have not only shown what we have been preparing with our coach, dream machine Dennis Mitchell, as well as our assistant coach Sharie Lewis, but we also knew this moment could be possible as long as we put our minds, our bodies as well as our spirit into it.
“Today with every single one of us as well as the team and the support system that we all have, building up each other, we knew that this was possible, and we got the job done. We didn’t put the world on notice, the world already knew who we were.”
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