Join the AW team and special guest Dame Kelly Holmes to look ahead to Paris 2024 and step back in time to the game-changing LA Olympics of 1984

The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are the first in the event’s history to be fully gender equal, with an even number of places being offered to male and female competitors. The logo for the Games is, the organisers say, “a homage a homage to female athletes and a nod to history, as it was in 1900 at the Olympic Games in Paris that women were first allowed to compete.”

It’s fitting, then, that the first episode of the brand new Athletics Weekly podcast focuses not only on the events to come in the French capital over the coming weeks, but also on the female athletes who have changed the face of athletics.

This episode sees AW Editorial Director Euan Crumley joined by Managing Director and Olympic medallist Wendy Sly, as well as Head of Digital Jason Henderson. There is also a special guest appearance from 2004 double Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes, who gives her thoughts on the chances of this year’s 800m gold medal favourite Keely Hodgkinson.

The team pinpoint some of the major events to come in the Olympic schedule and the athletes likely to stand out, but there is also a journey back in time by 40 years to LA 1984, the edition that many people see as having created the Olympics as we now know them. It was part of a golden age for athletics and Wendy relives what it was like behind the scenes and on the Coliseum track during a landmark Games for female athletes.

Will the 2024 Games also stand out? Start your journey to the Paris Olympics with The Athletics Weekly Podcast and look out for our daily episodes as the action unfolds.

» LISTEN TO THE FIRST EPISODE HERE

» You can read our in-depth feature with Dame Kelly Holmes in the Olympic preview issue of AW magazine. Subscribe here