Was France always this good at the Olympics?

With the closing ceremony on Sunday, the 2024 Summer Olympics came to an end. And while I did not get to watch as much as I maybe would have liked, these summer games once again did not fail to impress.

I followed the U.S. women’s soccer team’s impressive run to reclaim their top stop, earning gold by winning a trio of nail-biting 1-0 victories in the knockout stage, two of which were scoreless at the end of regulation and had to go into extra time. Steph Curry’s clutch three-point precision in the final two games against Serbia and France helped the American basketball team to their fifth consecutive gold medal was a sight to behold. Noah Lyles’ lean in the 100-meter dash was the embodiment of how even the smallest decisions can be the difference maker at the highest level of competition. Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky solidified their legendary status as Olympians by picking up even more hardware in Paris.

And those were just the U.S. athletes that I was able to catch. Turkish sharpshooter Yusuf Dikec won the silver medal as part of the 10 meter air pistol mixed team, sans all of the fancy aiming equipment used by most other competitors. The French swimmer Léon Marchand grabbed five medals, four of which were gold, in a dominating performance in his home country in which he broke four Olympic records. I also caught other swimmers like Australian Mollie O'Callaghan and Canadian Summer McIntosh, who impressed in their own right. The tiebreaker between Shinnosuke Oka and Ángel Barajas in the horizontal bar was intense.

But as I was watching, I noticed an interesting trend. Was it just me, or were the French athletes doing particularly well this year? Sure, France always seemed like a top-10 country in total medal count at the Olympics, but French athletes seemed like they were finding the podium at a higher rate than ever in Paris.

And in fact, they were. France ended the games with 64 total medals and had 16 golds. At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, French athletes earned 33 medals, 10 of which were gold, and at the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, they picked up 42 medals and 10 were gold. France had nearly doubled their medal output from the prior Olympics and far outstripped their performance before that as well, all while in Paris. Coincidence?

Well, no. But not because the French were getting special treatment for being the hosts. It is actually pretty common for the host countries to do better at the Olympics and the reasons don’t really have that much to do with favoritism for the home team.

On one hand, it’s a pure numbers game. One of the main reasons is that the host country typically sends more athletes to their own Olympics than in a typical year. The cost of travel and boarding is significantly less and the qualification standards are typically less stringent. With more bites at the apple, you typically see more results, especially at the bronze and silver levels.

Data also shows that host countries also typically spend more money on training and facilities for athletes when preparing for an upcoming Olympics, often leading to a more competitive all-around squad as a result. Another factor is that host countries are more likely to pick events that they are likely to succeed in when choosing new sports to be added to the Olympic roster or leaving off ones that they are less likely to find medal contenders for.

And, of course, while it is less quantifiable than the previous three reasons, there is always the factor of having a home crowd cheering you on. Athletes have consistently reported feeling more energized by thunderous applause and encouragement and while experts and studies differ on what exactly gives teams a “home field advantage,” the raw data suggests that home teams perform better than away teams.

At any rate, it is always fun to see the incredible physical feats these athletes are able to achieve and to see them compete head to head with their peers in a bunch of sports that I normally wouldn’t really follow. Until the Winter 2026 Olympic games!

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW BY

NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD REPORTER