The Paris 2024 Olympics turned athletes into national heroes all around the world, with many medal winners receiving deservingly rousing welcomes back home.
In Dublin, crowds gathered to welcome athletes from Team Ireland as they returned home from the Paris Olympics. It is the first time the Irish Olympic Team have received a civic reception on their return home.They won seven medals at Paris 2024 – making the Paris team Ireland’s most successful Olympics team – 100 years after the country first took part in the Olympics.
Down in Australia, Olympians received a heroes’ welcome at Sydney airport after landing on home soil, after the nation’s most successful Olympic campaign yet. The Australian team set a national record with 18 golds and 53 total medals at Paris 2024 from their 460-strong Olympic team, which touched down in Sydney earlier this morning, greeted by a massive crowd of fans and a ceremony awaiting them.
Remember the Filipino gymnast Carlos Yulo, who won two gold medals in the Paris Olympics? He flew home to a hero’s welcome Tuesday with a nationally televised tribute by the president and donors pledging more than $1 million worth of cash and gifts, including a resort house and free lunch buffets for life.
The 24-year-old’s wins in the men’s floor exercise and vault were the largest victory ever by a Filipino athlete since the Philippines joined the Games a century ago.
The euphoria over Yulo’s wins has provided a respite for a nation long ridden with poverty, deep divisions and conflicts. Arriving in Manila, Yulo and the other Filipino athletes who participated were welcomed by flag-waving admirers who reached out for handshakes and took selfies.
In Canada, the arrival terminals at airports in Toronto and Montreal were filled with cheers on Monday as fans and family gathered to give a hero’s welcome to Canadian Olympians returning home with a record-breaking medal haul. The Summer Games saw Team Canada bring home an unprecedented number of medals — nine gold and 27 in total. Both were records for Canada at a non-boycotted Summer Olympics, surpassing previous highs set in Tokyo three years ago and 1992 in Barcelona.
Taiwan took it a notch higher, dispatching three F-16 fighter jets to accompany its Olympic athletes on the final hours of their flight home from the Paris Games on Tuesday.
Competing under the name Chinese Taipei, Taiwanese athletes brought home seven medals — two golds and five bronzes — the second-best result for the island in an Olympic Games.
Competing under the name Chinese Taipei, Taiwanese athletes brought home seven medals — two golds and five bronzes — the second-best result for the island in an Olympic Games.
Then in Pakistan, thousands of fans gathered for the return of Olympic javelin champion Arshad Nadeem, who set an Olympic record to win the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The story was the same for South Africa’s Olympians at the OR Tambo Airport, and at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenyan athletes received a once in a lifetime welcome back, greeted by drumming and dancing. Kenya won 11 medals overall in Paris, the most by an African country, with two of those coming from Faith Kipyegon, who also set a new Olympic record in the women’s 1500m event.
Throngs of proud Batswana broke into song as they welcomed home the winner of the country’s first gold medal, 200-metre sprinter Letsile Tebogo, and fellow Olympians in Botswana’s capital, Gaborone. The Olympians were received by President Masisis and treated to a hero’s welcome by traditional dancers.
They were then carried atop military tanks to the National stadium where 30,000 strong countrymen and women, who had been given Half the day off, were waiting to welcome them home.
Apart from his historic gold in the men’s 200m, a first for Africa in the event, Tebogo also anchored Botswana to a 4x400m silver on the last day of the athletics.