■ Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze, Brazil: They won gold medals at the last two Olympics in the women’s skiff known as 49erFX.
■ Stu McNay, United States: The 42-year-old has competed in the past four Olympics and will race in Marseille in the mixed dinghy known as 470 together with Lara Dallman-Weiss. They’ll face stiff competition from Spain’s Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman, who used to compete for the U.S.
■ Daniela Moroz, United States: The San Francisco native has won six world championships in kitesurfing.
■ Luuc van Opzeeland, Netherlands: The 25-year-old Dutchman is the reigning world champion in men’s windsurfing-iQFOil.
■ Kitesurfing is a new sport at these Games for men and women and the athletes will compete at some of the fastest speeds of any Olympic sports in the open sea. Windsurfing-iQFOil is also new. The other events are men’s and women’s dinghy, kite, skiff plus two mixed races, dinghy, and multihull.
■ U.S. redemption? The once-dominant U.S. Olympic sailing team has been in a persistent slump since the 2012 Games, but it’s looking for redemption with veterans like Stu McNay (mixed 470s) and six-time world champion Daniela Moroz (kitesurfing).
■ Vincent Hancock, United States: The most decorated Olympic skeet shooter of all time, Hancock has three gold medals in an event no one else has won more than once. Hancock, who aims to retire at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, already trains a new generation of U.S. shooters at his complex near Fort Worth, Texas.
■ Nino Salukvadze, Georgia: At the age of 55, Salukvadze is set to become the first woman to compete in 10 Olympics when she takes part in the women’s 25-meter pistol shooting event. Salukvadze’s Olympic career began at 19 back in 1988 when she won gold for the Soviet Union.
■ Tune in early on the first morning. The first gold medal of the Paris Olympics is set to be awarded at the shooting range. The mixed team 10-meter air rifle competition is expected to conclude at 11:50 a.m. local time on July 27, the morning after the opening ceremony. It’s a recent Olympic tradition for shooting to fire the metaphorical starting pistol on the medal rush. Yang Qian won the first gold at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and Ginny Thrasher of the United States had that honor in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
■ The shooting events can be a place for smaller countries to shine at the Olympics. Nineteen different nations won medals in shooting at the Tokyo Games, including a silver and bronze for the tiny country of San Marino, which is home to just over 33,000 people.
■ Jagger Eaton, United States: Eaton won bronze in the street contest in Tokyo and is expected to become the first person to compete in the Olympics in both park and street in Paris. He became the first athlete to win park and street world championships when he captured the park title in February 2023.
■ Sky Brown, Britain: The 15-year-old phenom is competing in her second Olympics after becoming her country’s youngest medal winner in Tokyo when she won bronze in the park contest at just 13 years and 28 days old. A two-sport star, she came just short of also qualifying for the surfing competition in Paris.
■ Nyjah Huston, United States: The 29-year-old Huston was favored to win gold in street at Tokyo but finished a disappointing seventh. He should contend for a medal this time around after recovering from an ACL tear.
■ Ginwoo Onodera, Japan: Now 14, Onodera won the men’s street competition at the X Games last May when he was just 13. The Japanese star won bronze at the World skateboarding Championship in 2023 and became the youngest national champion in Japan’s history when he was 12.
■ The competition will feature a beautiful backdrop when it takes place at the Place de la Concorde in the center of the city situated in front of the Eiffel Tower. Watching Trew and Brown compete in the park contest should be a treat with the two youngsters sure to wow on the world’s biggest stage.
■ Carissa Moore, United States: The Olympic and five-time world champion has announced she’s stepping away from top-tier competitive surfing after the Paris Games. She won the first Olympic gold medal awarded in women’s shortboard at Tokyo three years ago. The 31-year-old, Hawaii-born Moore is widely regarded as one of the greatest female surfers of all time.
■ Vahine Fierro, France: The Tahiti-born surfer will be competing just 200 kilometers (125 miles) from her hometown in French Polynesia. Having won the Tahiti Pro last month on the wave — called Teahupo’o— Fierro gives host nation France hopes of clinching a medal this year.
■ Filipe Toledo, Brazil: The two-time World surf league champion qualified to participate in the Games this year, but after a poor showing at a competition, Toledo posted on social media that he’d be stepping back from the rest of the 2024 Championship Tour season. The good news is, Toledo’s manager confirmed to The Associated Press that the 29-year-old Brazilian surfer will participate in the Olympics.
■ Jack Robinson, Australia: Winner of the 2023 World surf league competition at Teahupo’o, Robinson is considered one of the world’s best barrel riders. This could play to his advantage as the wave is widely considered one of the world’s heaviest barrels.
■ This is the second time surfing is on the Olympic sports program after its debut in Tokyo, where the Games and events surrounding them were muted by COVID-19 restrictions.
■ distance from Paris. The surfing competition in Tahiti breaks the record for the farthest Olympic medal competition to be staged outside of a the host city, being more than 9,765 miles from Paris.
■ Panipak Wongpattanakit, Thailand: Is the defending Olympic champion in the women’s -49-kilogram category and the top-ranked athlete in her weight division.
■ C.J. Nickolas, United States: He won silver at the 2023 world championships in the -80 kilograms class, the first U.S. medal at the taekwondo worlds since 2009.
■ Omar Ismail, Palestine: Is the first Palestinian athlete to qualify for the Olympics in a combat sport. He competes in the -58 kilograms category.
■ New rules have been introduced for the Paris Games, where matches will be decided in a best-of-three format rather than cumulative scoring. Athletes must win two of the three rounds to win the match. The changes have been introduced to add more action and minimize wait-and-see strategies.
■ Gergely Salim won gold at the Barcelona Games in 1992 when taekwondo was a demonstration sport. More than 20 years later, his son Omar will be bidding for an Olympic title.
■ The Refugee Olympic Team will have five athletes competing in taekwondo.
■ Alex Yee, Britain: The silver medalist in Tokyo three years ago won a test event on the Paris course last August. He is a former 10,000-meter runner on the track.
■ Léo Bergere, France: No. 1 in Olympic men’s qualifying rankings.
■ Dorian Coninx, France: The 2023 world champion sustained a broken wrist and elbow but said “anything is possible” once the race starts.
■ Kristian Blummenfelt, Norway: The reigning Olympic champion.
■ Beth Potter, Britain: In a stellar 2023, the Glasgow native won the Olympic test event and was crowned world champion.
■ Flora Duffy, Bermuda: The reigning Olympic champion had contemplated retirement because of a knee injury.
■ Taylor Knibb, United States: She has won the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in back-to-back seasons. She’s been racing triathlons since she was 11. Her mother is a former Ironman competitor.
■ How clean is the water? Specifically, a stretch of the River Seine in sight of the Eiffel Tower where French President Emmanuel Macron is due to take a dip. Triathlon for men and women starts with a 1.5-kilometer (0.93-mile) swim in the river before a 40k (24.9-mile) cycle and 10k (6.2-mile) run. Cleaning up the long-polluted Seine is a key legacy target of these Olympics. An open water swimming race last August was canceled over water concerns after heavy rain, but triathlon test events did happen two weeks later.
■ Jordan Larson, United States: The 37-year-old Larson will be making her fourth appearance at the Olympics.
■ Jordyn Poulter, United States: The 26-year-old setter sustained a serious knee injury late in 2022, had surgery early last year and only recently resumed full action.
33-year-old outside hitter helped France win gold in Tokyo three years ago. He’s also a good rapper.
■ The French men go for a repeat gold medal in front of their home crowd. France beat the Russian team in Tokyo to become champions. They had never made it past the quarterfinals before.
■ Can the U.S. women repeat? Larson dropped to the floor and cried after Brazil couldn’t return her spike on match point for the United States to win gold in Tokyo. The outside hitter appeared to be headed into retirement but she’s back. U.S. coach Karch Kiraly considers her the best American of all time. Outside hitter Kelsey Robinson Cook will be competing in her third Olympics. Kiraly says Poulter “has been working really hard to return to full capacity” from her knee surgery.
■ Maggie Steffens, United States: The decorated attacker was banged up at the Tokyo Olympics, but she still helped the U.S. to an unprecedented third consecutive gold medal. She is the highest scoring woman in Olympics history with 56 goals.
■ Alvaro Granados, Spain: The 25-year-old Granados rallied Spain to a dramatic 11-10 victory over Croatia in January for the country’s first European championship. He scored a team-high 18 goals when Spain finished fourth at the Tokyo Games.
■ Simone van de Kraats, Netherlands: One of the leaders for the high-scoring Dutch, the 23-year-old van de Kraats poured in a tournament-high 28 goals in her first Olympics in Tokyo. She powered the Netherlands to the world championship last year for its biggest title since it won gold at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
■ Marko Bijac, Croatia: The goalkeeper remains one of the best in the world. He won silver at the 2016 Olympics, and he was named best goalie at this year’s European championship.
■ Francesco di Fulvio, Italy: The 30-year-old di Fulvio was the MVP at this year’s world championships. He scored a team-high 17 goals for Italy in Tokyo.
■ Steffens and the U.S. go for history. No team — men or women — has won four straight water polo titles at the Olympics. The Americans are thin at center this time around, but it might not matter with their array of attackers and Ashleigh Johnson at goaltender.
■ Hungary is the winningest program in men’s water polo with nine golds, but its bronze in Tokyo was its first medal since its run of three straight Olympic titles from 2000 to 2008. Gergo Zalanki and company are hoping to get the country back in the final in Paris.
■ Croatia is the reigning men’s world champion after a dramatic 15-13 victory over Italy in February. It is looking for a second gold medal at the Olympics after it also won in London.
■ Hampton Morris, United States: At 20, the Marietta, Georgia, native will be the youngest American weightlifter to compete at the Olympics since Cheryl Haworth in 2000. Morris broke the clean and jerk 61-kilogram world record by lifting 388 pounds (176 kilograms) at a World Cup event in Thailand earlier this year.
■ Lasha Talakhadze, Georgia: Having set 26 world records over the course of his career, the 30-year-old back-to-back Olympic champion in the heaviest weight class is returning to try for a three-peat. He’s back after missing the European championships earlier this year because of a knee injury.
■ Maude Charron, Canada: The 64 kg gold medalist in Tokyo is again one of the top contenders, now in the 59 kg division. The 31-year-old from Quebec is just one of five Canadians — men or women — to win an Olympic medal in the sport.
■ Yekta Jamali, Refugee Team: From Iran initially, she fled to Germany two years ago because she faced discrimination for being a woman in the sport. A world junior silver medalist, Jamali is not even 19 yet and hopes to win a medal as part of the IOC Refugee Team.
■ Doping troubles have dogged weightlifting, to the point the IOC threatened to remove it from the Olympic program beginning in 2028. It has had a reprieve and been confirmed for Los Angeles after leadership changes and attempted reforms, but drug testing will be heavily scrutinized in Paris.
■ The last U.S. men’s weightlifting medalists were Mario Martinez and Guy Carlton in 1984 and the last to win gold was Paul Anderson in 1956. Hampton Morris stands the best chance of adding a new chapter to that history, though defending champion Li Fabin of China is formidable competition.
■ China has another chance to dominate in weightlifting after leading the Tokyo Olympics with seven gold medals and eight overall. No other country had more than one gold.
■ Ma Long, China: The 35-year-old table tennis icon is the reigning Olympic and World Cup singles champion. He also won the Olympic gold medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
■ Sun Yingsha, China: Sun is the top-ranked woman and the defending World Cup singles champion. She also helped China win gold at the Tokyo Games in the women’s team competition.
■ Wang Chuqin, China: No. 1 in the men’s singles ranking, Wang was an alternate for the Chinese team at the Tokyo Games.
■ Felix Lebrun, France: The 17-year-old Lebrun is considered one of the rising stars in the sport. At No. 5 in
