The world's best athletes are pouring into a city that boasts some of the world's best baking: Paris. So in honor of both, let's dive into a baker's dozen of burning track and field questions ahead of the start of competition on Thursday, August 1.

Entering Paris, Noah Lyles holds the title of “World's Fastest Man.” The 27-year-old is the defending world champion in the 100m and 200m and is set up to be one of the faces of these Olympic Games.

Lyles has yet to win an Olympic gold medal – he took 200m bronze in Tokyo – but is shooting to achieve historic highs at the Paris Games.

“Three gold medals is great,” Lyles said on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “But I was talking to some of my family and friends, and they’re like, ‘You need to go bigger.’ So, what’s bigger than three? Four.”

No male track athlete has ever won four sprint gold medals at an Olympic Games. Legends Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis each collected four golds at their Olympic zeniths in 1936 and 1984, as have four others. But those included medals in field or long-distance events. Lyles is shooting for four sprinting golds, which would be a first.

Lyles has qualified for the Olympic 100m and 200m – events in which he won gold at 2023 Worlds in Budapest – and is considered a shoe-in to run in the men’s 4x100m relay in Paris. The most hotly contested facet of his grand plan, however, is his quest to earn a spot on the U.S. 4x400m relay team.

On a recent podcast appearance, Lyles told Track World News that he’d select himself for the U.S. 4x400m relay team alongside Chris Bailey, Michael Norman and Rai Benjamin. Lyles conspicuously omitted U.S. Olympic trials 400m champion Quincy Hall, who criticized Lyles in a post to X on July 19.

“(Noah Lyles) I don’t bother nobody but my blocks ready anytime you feel like you can beat me in the 400 you was talking (too) much on my name on (your) little podcast,” Hall wrote. “I don’t do the little slick comments and remarks I line up.”

NBC Sports broadcaster Ato Boldon feels confident about Lyles’ chances to run in the 4x400m relay, if he prevails in his other events.

“I've been around long enough to know that if Noah Lyles wins the 100m in dramatic fashion, then wins the 200m, and the U.S. 4x100m team is standing on top of that podium for the first time since 2000 because of Noah's fantastic anchor leg, they will find a leg for him to run on one of those relays somewhere,” Boldon said in a broadcast team roundtable. “I don't think he's proven that he’s earned a spot on that team, and maybe it becomes a political thing. But why is anybody going to care when you show up on the TODAY show with your four gold medals from Paris hanging around your neck? You think that Dorothy in Kansas gives a s***?”

Lyles did run in the 4x400m relay squad that earned a silver medal at 2024 World Indoors in Glasgow. It remains to be seen if he’ll run in the event at the Paris Games – but even if not, multiple gold medals are quite possibly in the offing for Lyles. He’s aiming to become the first American man to win 100m gold since the 2004 Athens Olympics, when Justin Gatlin prevailed, and the first American man to win 200m gold since those same 2004 Games (Shawn Crawford).

To catch up: Sha'Carri Richardson is among the top track stars on Earth, but she’s yet to make her Olympic debut. After qualifying for the Tokyo Games at the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials, a sample revealed that she had tested positive for cannabis use. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) then suspended her for one month, which kept her out of the Tokyo Olympics.

Two years later, Richardson won her first world title in the 100m, fueled by her new mindset: “I’m not back. I’m better.” This June, she then qualified for these Olympics by winning the women’s 100m final at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials and enters Paris as a gold-medal favorite.

No American woman has won 100m Olympic gold since Gail Devers at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and Richardson is vying to end the drought. Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah won 100m and 200m gold medals at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics. Thompson-Herah won’t compete in Paris due to injury, but three of her Jamaican counterparts – five-time 100m world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, 19-year-old Tia Clayton and Shashalee Forbes – will contend with Richardson for Olympic gold.

On Wednesday morning, Team Jamaica announced that Tokyo 100m bronze medalist Shericka Jackson will not compete in the 100m in Paris, choosing instead to focus on her specialty, the 200m. This provides a major boost to Richardson's gold medal chances.

St. Lucia’s Julien Alfred and Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith of Côte d'Ivoire could both give Richardson a run for gold, as well, but Richardson remains a strong favorite.

Dutch superstar Femke Bol is the women’s 400m hurdles defending world champion, and she would tell you that McLaughlin-Levrone losing is the correct answer here.

But McLaughlin-Levrone has recent results on her side. She just reset the world record for an incredible fifth time, clocking a time of 50.65 seconds and qualifying for her third Olympic Games. She also has toppled Bol in each of their previous two meetings: At the Tokyo Olympics, where McLaughlin-Levrone won gold and Bol took bronze, and at 2022 Worlds in Eugene, McLaughlin-Levrone set a then-world record of 50.68 seconds in a win.

Bol did drop a timely statement of her own in a pre-Olympics tune-up at the London Diamond League on July 21. The Dutchwoman won the event (without McLaughlin-Levrone) in 50.95 seconds, setting a new personal best and meet record, while moving to within 0.3 seconds of the world record.

So, history says the most likely result is another McLaughlin-Levrone world record, but Bol might give her trouble. If McLaughlin-Levrone wins gold, she’d become the first woman in history to win multiple 400m hurdles gold medals.
 

The men’s 1500m is Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s event – for now. The 23-year-old Norwegian star enters the Paris Olympics as the reigning 1500m Olympic champion after setting an Olympic record with his command win in Tokyo. With a victory in Paris, Ingebrigtsen would become the first man to win back-to-back Olympic 1500m titles since current World Athletics President Sebastian Coe did so in 1980 and 1984.

Ingebrigsten’s journey to that milestone is rife with rivals – most notably, Josh Kerr of Great Britain, who enters as the defending world champion. Kerr also has serious beef with Ingebrigsten.

After losing to Kerr at 2023 Worlds, Ingebrigtsen asserted he wasn’t 100% and declared to a Norwegian publication winter that he could beat Kerr “98 out of 100 times.”

In February, Ingebrigtsen doubled down, asserting that he could have topped Kerr “blindfolded” at the Millrose Games in New York, where Kerr set a two-mile indoor world record.

Kerr, 26, has since fired back multiple times, criticizing what he views as his young rival’s outsized ego. He beat out Ingebrigtsen at the Prefontaine Classic in May with a British record of 3:45.34.

Without Kerr on the starting line, Ingebrigsten has built up some pre-Olympic momentum. He shattered his own European record at Diamond League Monaco with a time of 3:26.73, the sixth-fastest time ever. He also become the first athlete to break 3:27 since 2015.

Throw in one of the most-talented groups of U.S. 1500m runners ever – Yared Nuguse, Hobbs Kessler and Cole Hocker – and the stage is set for an epic 1500m race at the Paris Olympics. 

And with the Olympics underway, Kerr is remarkably confident and focused.

"The headlines will be me versus him, but I will be racing those other guys on the line too," Kerr said in remarks reported by Reuters.

I'm the best in the world. This is the best system, I have the best coaches and I'm looking to go to war.

It feels like a coin flip.

American Rai Benjamin and Norwegian Karsten Warholm have met head-to-head seven times, and the score reads: Warholm 4, Benjamin 3. In those seven matchups, the widest margin of victory was just 1.53 seconds.

At this summer's Monaco Diamond League event, Benjamin surged in the home stretch to edge Warholm by just .06 seconds. That win gave Benjamin victory in the past two showdowns – he also won at the Eugene Diamond League in 2023.

But Warholm still holds the all-time advantage, and he’s won at the top stages of the sport, including at the Tokyo Olympics, where he set a world record of 45.94 seconds.

In Paris, Benjamin, Warholm and Brazilian Alison dos Santos will all compete for gold as they continue this golden era of this event. The top-15 times in history all have been recorded in the past 36 months, each by one of those three athletes.

Mark your calendars for August 9 for a scintillating 400m hurdles final at Stade de France.

Almost every result since Tokyo says yes.

Since falling to Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment by just .05 seconds in the Tokyo Olympic men’s 110m hurdles final, Holloway has been on an absolute tear.

He's won two world titles, two world indoor titles and broke his own 60m hurdles world record in February. Then, the Florida alum cruised at this year’s U.S. Olympic Trials in his typically dominant fashion. More often than not, Holloway appears like he’s simply running at a different level than his competitors.

Holloway heads into Paris as the No. 1 ranked men’s hurdler in the world, ahead of Parchment and fellow U.S. star Daniel Roberts.

While Holloway has torched his competition, Parchment has trudged through a quiet season. His season’s best stands at just 13.19 seconds, well back of Holloway’s 12.86. Two of Parchment’s countrymen – national champion Rasheed Broadbell (13.18) and Orlando Bennett (13.18 as well) – have both edged him, too.

Still, Parchment’s 2021 defeat of Holloway looms large.

“It's a sour taste in my mouth,” Holloway told NBC Olympics. “I was only 23. And I'm 26 now, so I’ve seen a lot of moons and a lot of sunshine since then.”

If Parchment does repeat that Olympic victory, he’d become the first man to earn three Olympic medals in the 110m hurdles.

After the Tokyo Olympic final, Holloway cited the “nerves” and “big atmosphere” getting the best of him. But he says, he’s evolved. He’s a historically dominant hurdler who is likely hurdling his way toward his first Olympic gold medal. And he's even sharing his pump-up playlist:

Indeed, 16-year-old Quincy Wilson is a tremendous young dynamo worthy of attention. But the Paris track and field slate also features a crop of impressive veterans.

At 47 years old, women's marathoner Sinead Diver is the oldest track and field athlete at this year's Games. Diver was born in Ireland but moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2002 and competes for Australia. Diver only began running in 2010 at age 33 and quickly rocketed up the Australian and international ranks. By 2012, she was an Australian Half Marathon champion. In 2019, she finished fifth at the New York City Marathon. Diver then made her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, where she finished 10th. She is a mother of two and works as a software engineer. Now, she's a two-time Olympian.

Lisa Weightman, 45, joins Diver as an alternate on the Australian women's marathon team. In that same race, Canadian Malindi Elmore, 44, is set to compete in her third Olympics – two decades after her Olympic debut at the 2004 Athens Games. In Athens, Elmore was coming off a tremendous collegiate run at Stanford University, where she was a three-time All-American. She also studied abroad in Paris as a student.

Melina Robert-Michon is among the flag bearers for host nation France. At 45, she's been a longtime discus stalwart who earned a silver medal at the Rio Olympics and also owns two world medals. Robert-Michon made her Olympic debut at the 2000 Sydney Games, 16 years before securing her first medal in Brazil.

Perhaps the veteran with the best chance at gracing the podium is Jamaican legend Fraser-Pryce, who already has announced that, at 37, these Olympics will be her last. Fraser-Pryce is considered one of the greatest sprinters in history. Her Olympic career dates back to 2008 in Beijing, where the Jamaican won 100m gold. She has since racked up eight Olympic medals and 16 medals at Worlds. Fraser-Pryce will compete in the women’s 100m and 4x100m relay at Stade de France.

When the Paris Olympics kicked off, Quincy Wilson was 16 years, 6 months and 14 days old. As a part of the U.S. Olympic men’s relay pool, Wilson's selection to the Olympic team smashed a U.S. track and field age record set generations ago by distance runner Jim Ryun, who was 17 years old at the 1964 Tokyo Games.

“I didn’t even expect things to come so fast,” Wilson told NBC Olympics. “When I put on this Team USA uniform, I’ll put it on with pride. Because at 16 years old, it’s just unheard of.”

For context, Wilson was born nearly four full years after Elmore’s debut in the Olympic marathon (and a year after the iPhone’s debut). But while Wilson is young, he’s become a dominant force in the men’s 400m game.

At the U.S. Olympic Trials in June, Wilson smashed Darrell Robinson’s 42-year-old under-18 record twice in three days.

Just under a month later, at the Holloway Pro Classic in Gainesville, Florida, Wilson set a new world record for the third time in a month, stopping the clock at 44.20 seconds. Wilson has gained borderline superstar status – Deion Sanders shouted him out, and Magic Johnson invited him to the owner’s box at a Washington Commanders game – and he’ll continue his sharp ascent in Paris.

If Wilson does run in the men’s 4x400m relay, he’d grace the track on August 9 and 10.

Wilson isn't the youngest Olympian in this year's track and field slate, however. Kenaz Kaniwete of Kiribati was born on March 28, 2008, which makes him 79 days younger than Wilson. Kiribati, an island nation in Oceania of just over 130,000 people, only has competed in five Olympic Games after making its debut in 2004. The 16-year-old Kaniwete is just the country's 15th Olympian ever. He'll run in the men's 100m.

Mariam Kareem of the United Arab Emirates is also 16 and was born a week after Wilson, on Jan. 15. She plans to compete in the women's 100m.

Two-time defending Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge is considered the greatest marathoner of all-time. After winning gold at the Rio and Tokyo Games, Kipchoge is looking to become the first athlete ever to win three Olympic marathon gold medals. His mark of 2:01.09 stood as a world record before fellow Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum broke it with a time of 2:00.35 at the 2023 Chicago Marathon.

Kiptum, 24, and his coach, Gervais Hakizimana, were tragically killed in a car crash in Kenya on February 11.

Along with the 39-year-old Kipchoge, Kenyan Benson Kipruto, 33, is a threat to win gold. Kipruto won the Tokyo Marathon in March. 

Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, 42, also is considered a podium favorite, as well. Bekele may be Olympic marathon debutant, but the veteran does boast three Olympic gold medals: two in the 10,000m and one in the 5000m. Bekele is a two-time Berlin Marathon champion (2016, 2019) and was the London Marathon runner-up this April.

Bekele and Kipchoge first squared off in the Olympics at the 2004 Athens Games, when Bekele earned silver and Kipchoge took bronze in the men’s 5000m.

Americans Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, training partners from Utah, are both making their first Olympic appearances this summer. They join 37-year-old American Leonard Korir on the U.S. squad. Born in Iten, Kenya, Korir joined the U.S. Army in 2015 and has been part of its World Class Athlete Program in Colorado Springs. Korir competed at the Rio Olympics, where he placed 14th in the men’s 10,000m. 

On the women’s side, Ethiopian Tigst Assefa enters as a strong gold-medal favorite after shattering the world record (2:11.53) at the 2023 Berlin Marathon. Assefa is the only woman in history to run a marathon in under 2 hours, 13 minutes.

When Assefa set the new record, she edged past Brigid Kosgei, who previously held the top all-time mark. Kosgei enters Paris after collecting her first Olympic medal – a silver – at the Tokyo Games.

Then there's Dutch star Sifan Hassan, who is rewriting the playbook. Hassan plans to run the 1500m, 5000m, 10,000m and marathon in Paris. Hassan may be exhausted by the time the women's marathon on August 11 rolls around, but she's caught fire. Despite having to stop for a hip stretch midway through the 2023 London Marathon, Hassan won the race, taking down defending Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya. Hassan also won the Chicago Marathon in October.

In Paris, Hassan may compete in up to eight individual races in a span of nine days. Should she earn a medal in all four events, she’d join Czechoslovakia’s Emil Zatopek as the only athlete, male or female, to win medals in the 5000m, 10,000m and marathon at a single Olympics – Zatopek took home gold in all of those events at the 1952 Helsinki Games.

Jepchirchir, meanwhile, has a shot at history this summer. She’s vying to become the first woman to win multiple Olympic marathon gold medals.

The U.S. contingent of Fiona O'Keeffe, Emily Sisson and Dakotah Lindwurm is considered a strong trio, with Sisson standing as the likely best chance for a medal. The U.S. is aiming to start a streak after Molly Seidel took bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. 

Ryan Crouser, world record holder, two-time defending Olympic champion and two-time reigning world champion, still has one more box to tick on his all-time great résumé. With a gold in Paris, Crouser would become the first athlete in history, man or woman, to win three Olympic shot put titles.

After battling through two blood clots in his left leg to win gold at the 2023 World Championships, Crouser’s upper body has been a mess in 2024. He tore a pectoral muscle and tweaked an ulnar nerve, but the 31-year-old still won gold at 2024 World Indoors and prevailed at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Crouser’s American teammate, Joe Kovacs, likely is his top competition for gold in Paris, along with New Zealand’s Tom Walsh. Kovacs and Walsh took silver and bronze, respectively, at the Tokyo Olympics.

Men’s shot put is as U.S.-dominant as any Olympic event. The nation has won 19 Olympic gold medals. No other nation has won more than three.

As with Holloway and McLaughlin-Levrone, history and numbers are on Crouser’s side. But Kovacs, whose top throw in 2024 actually tops Crouser by 0.29m, isn’t shying away.

Only world record holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee has won Olympic gold in the heptathlon for the U.S. – she did so in 1988 and 1992. Her mentee, Anna Hall, is now vying to snap the 32-year gold medal drought that has followed.

During June's U.S. Trials, Hall won the women's heptathlon just six months after undergoing a complex knee surgery to earn a spot on her first Olympic team. Hall previously broke her foot at the 2021 Olympic Trials after crashing into a barrier.

"I'm almost in shock," Hall said after running the 800m at Trials. "This year has been so hard. Falling in 2021, the journey to get here was so much harder than I imagined. I'm just so thankful."

But Hall will next face some of the stiffest competition in Olympic heptathlon history. Two-time defending Olympic champion Nafi Thiam of Belgium boasts this year’s world-leading score (6848) and seems to have fully recovered from an Achilles injury suffered in 2023. If Thiam wins gold in Paris, she would become the only person (man or woman) to win three Olympic gold medals in a multi event (decathlon or heptathlon).

Great Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson is competing in her fourth Olympics and enters Paris as the defending world champion. But “KJT” withdrew from the European Championships in June, citing a minor injury in her right leg.

That could open a window for Hall. And as she approaches Paris, she has the legendary Joyner-Kersee in her corner. 

"It's meant the world,” Hall said after U.S. Trials. “[Joyner-Kersee] has been here for everything. She called me last week and she was like, ‘I’m going to call you every two days until Trials [to] make sure your head’s right. You can do this. I’m behind you. You just have to believe.'"

Hall believes, and with good reason. She nearly won world gold in 2023, falling just 20 points behind Johnson-Thompson in Budapest. Hall widely isn't considered the gold-medal favorite in Paris, but with any Olympic medal, she’d become the first American heptathlete to earn one since Hyleas Fountain in 2008.

Women’s 400m hurdles: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has broken her own record enough times (five) to label this event a top candidate for a new world record at these Olympics.

Men’s pole vault: Swedish pole vault star Mondo Duplantis is only 24, and he’s already nearing greatest-of-all-time status. He has reset his own world record an astonishing seven times. He most recently did so in April, when he cleared 6.24m. The former LSU student-athlete is a candidate to break his own mark in Paris.

Men’s shot put: Ryan Crouser is already on the verge of one piece of history as he vies for that third Olympic gold medal. And as the current world record holder with a distance of 23.56m, the American might break it for a third time this summer.

Women’s 200m: U.S. legend Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world record of 21.34 seconds has stood for 36 years. Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson came excruciatingly close to breaking it at 2023 Worlds, blazing to a time of 21.41 seconds. In spite of winning gold, Jackson was visibly disappointed in herself for not eclipsing Griffith-Joyner's record. While Jackson owns the second-fastest time ever, U.S. superstar (and future epidemiologist) Gabby Thomas holds the hot hand. She ran a scorching 21.78 seconds in the semifinals of U.S. Trials in June, the fastest time in the world this year. The Jackson-Thomas women’s 200m showdown is must-see TV at these Olympics, and a world record is possible.

Men’s 110m hurdles: Whenever Grant Holloway steps on the track, American Aries Merritt’s 12-year-old world record is in doubt. Holloway’s all-time best (12.81 seconds) is just a hair off the world record of 12.80.

Women’s 400m: Femke Bol holds the indoor world record in this event (49.17 seconds), which she reset this March. The overall event record of 47.60 seconds was set by East German Marita Koch in 1985, and Bol will chase that in Paris.

Men’s 400m hurdles: Karsten Warholm’s own world record of 45.94 seconds hangs in doubt for any matchup between him and Benjamin.

Men’s triple jump: Jonathan Edwards of Great Britain set a triple jump world record back in 1995, and his mark of 18.29m has stuck for nearly three full decades. Cuban-born Jordan Diaz, who now holds Spanish citizenship and competes for Spain, cleared 18.18m at this year’s European Championships. That stands as the third-longest jump in history. It would take quite the leap to top Edwards – if anyone does, it’d likely be Diaz.

You’re undoubtedly used to the red-brick color that has marked Olympic tracks for decades, but the 2024 Olympic track is indeed purple.

Mondo, an Italian company that has designed each Olympic track since the 1976 Montreal Games, has whipped out two shades of purple for Paris 2024: a lighter lavender-like color and a darker purple.

“The big part of the job was to come up with a track that was different from what we had seen,” said Alain Blondel, the track and field sport manager for the Paris Olympic Committee. “To go a little bit outside the box.”

So, the track is purple for the same reason you might wear a fun shirt: Because it’s unique, and why not? The purple stands out, and it looks quite lovely already.