The Daily Advertiser's Tahlia Sinclair explains the progression of athletes through groups and heats at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
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00:00Winning an Olympic gold.
00:02It's something that children across the globe dream about.
00:04And 10,000 athletes are one step closer to achieving that dream this month
00:07when they arrive in Paris, France for the 2024 Olympics.
00:11Watching medals get won is one of the highlights of the Olympics.
00:13But there's a lot of sport happening before we get to that final stages.
00:17Pulls, heats and single elimination are the most common ways
00:20that athletes are eliminated from the Olympics.
00:22Very few sports at the Olympics are first-past-the-line wins.
00:26Marathon swimming and triathlon are two great examples
00:28where every athlete gets to compete for that medal.
00:30But for the most part,
00:32pulls, single elimination and heats are the way that we narrow down the field.
00:36For most athletes though, there is no second chances.
00:38That's a single elimination competition such as tennis.
00:41Fencing means if you lose, you're out.
00:44So let's talk to some experts about what this all means
00:46and how we can see Australia in medal contention.
00:48Coming into the Olympics,
00:51all the teams that qualify for the Olympics are split into groups.
00:54I believe in the basketball this year, we have three separate groups.
00:57Each pool will play all the teams once.
01:00So there's four teams in each of the pools.
01:02From there, you go through the quarterfinals,
01:05your semifinals and then obviously the grand finals.
01:08In individual sports where there's a high number of competitors,
01:10you'll often see them competing in heats before a final medal event.
01:14These heats help narrow down the competitor pool.
01:17Heat is pretty much where there's the amount of swimmers
01:21that have qualified for whatever event it is.
01:24There could be maybe 50 swimmers that have qualified for the event
01:28and obviously you have 10 lanes.
01:29So you're split up.
01:31More people qualify for their heats,
01:33like in their swim in the heats,
01:35but they probably won't make the final.