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Will the 17 Olympic medal mark be exceeded in Paris?
Algeria at the Olympics
The 46 Algerian athletes competing in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, scheduled from July 26 to August 11, will attempt to take up the challenge of adding to the Algerian haul, which stands at 17 medals (5 gold, 4 silver and 8 bronze), in 14 participations in the summer games. Traditional providers of Olympic medals, Algerian hopes are particularly focused on athletics with its rich list of achievements (4 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze) and boxing (1 gold, 5 bronze), which will once again be at the Olympics, with Djamel Sedjati best performer of the year in the 800 m (1:41.46) and boxer Imane Khelif, considered one of the best boxers in her category (66 kg). At the 2024 Olympics, we will also have to count on the rising star of world gymnastics, Kaylia Nemmour (17 years old), who dreams of offering Algeria its first medal in this discipline, or the national team of associated wrestling, which also covets its first Olympic medal with Bachir Sid Azara (87 kg, Greco-Roman), currently occupying the top of the world rankings.
In 14 participations in the summer jousts, the first of which dates back to 1964 in Japan, Algeria won its first Olympic medals at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, with the two bronze medals thanks to the boxers Mohamed Zaoui (71-75kg) and Mustapha Moussa (75-81kg). However, the greatest merit goes to Hassiba Boulmerka, the first Algerian athlete to have resounded the national anthem “Kassaman” in the largest gathering of world sport, during the final of the 1500m of the Spanish meeting in Barcelona in 1992. Still in Barcelona, another Olympic medal (bronze) fell into the Algerian purse thanks to the boxer, the late Hocine Soltani, who would climb to the top step of the podium four years later during the jousts in Atlanta in the United States. At the American event, the illustrious Olympic and world champion, Noureddine Morceli, succeeded in his favorite race (1,500m) to erase his incredible failure in Barcelona, by winning the Olympic gold, which was missing from his rich list of achievements. During these American contests, the boxer Mohamed Bahari won the bronze in the middleweight category (75 kg). The 1500m race, which remains the favorite event for Algerian athletes, after Nouria Merah-Benida, had achieved one of the greatest feats of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney by winning, to everyone’s surprise, the gold in the main athletics race, imitated 12 years later by Taoufik Makhloufi at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
The most decorated Algerian athlete in history (1 gold, 2 silver), Makhloufi managed to win two new silver medals at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the 1500m and 800m races.
The other medals in athletics and boxing were won at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney by Ali Said-Sief (silver, 5000 m), Aissa Djabir Said-Guerni (bronze, 800 m), the current Minister of Youth and Sports, Abderrahmane Hammad (bronze, high jump) and Mohamed Allalou (bronze, super lightweight).
@Apart from athletics and boxing, judo is the 3rd discipline to win medals at the Olympic Games thanks to the silver of Amar Benikhlef (-90 kg) and the bronze of Soraya Haddad (-52 kg), and who remain the only medalists from the Beijing Olympics (2008).
Deprived of medals at the last edition of the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021, Algeria will rely on the 46 athletes entered in 15 sports disciplines at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, to try to take up the challenge of expanding the Algerian harvest by flying the national colors in the sky of the French capital.
RS