For the 2024 Olympic Games, Morocco is sending a delegation of 60 athletes to Paris. And, much less publicised, a 27-strong delegation for the Paralympic Games, which start a month later, on 28 August.
So which sports are Moroccans most involved in? And those in which they are most likely to shine? Will they do better than in 2020, when Morocco came 63rd out of 206 with just one medal, a gold, it is true, won by Soufiane El-Bakkali in athletics (3,000 m steeplechase), who returns this year.
60 athletes, a respectable delegation, concentrated on a few sports
The Paris Olympic Games will feature 32 sports, the 28 “basic Olympic sports”, to which France has added breakdance, and surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing, which will be included in Tokyo in 2020. 205 countries (plus individual athletes and refugees) and 10,757 athletes. With its sixty participants, Morocco was the 47th country and the 5th African country behind South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya, which have much larger populations. Algeria managed to send 45 athletes, Tunisia 26 and Libya only 6.
Morocco entered athletes in 19 sports. The bulk of the selection is of course made up of the 18 players in the football team. Then comes athletics, with 8 men and 5 women. For all the other sports, Morocco only fields 1 to 3 competitors. If we exclude the football players, women are not too under-represented, with 18 women and 24 men. It’s worth noting that the women have the edge in combat sports, with 3 boxers and 2 taekwondo players, compared with one wrestler, Oussama Assad, and two judokas.
The delegation is larger than that of 2020, which included 46 athletes. But in 2020 there was no football team involved…
Finally, 38 athletes will be taking part in the Olympic Games for the first time. As for the Cubs and the Breakers…
Football first, with the Atlas Cubs taking on Ukraine on 24 July.
Morocco is sending a full team for the men’s football competition, as well as a team for the 5-a-side football competition, or cecifoot, in which Morocco won a bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The special feature of football at the Olympic Games is that it is reserved for players under the age of 23, the future “greats”. With the possibility of having three older players. This is the case for Achraf Hakimi, who at the age of 25 will take on the role of captain, as well as goalkeeper Munir Mohamedi (35) and striker Soufiane Rahimi (28). The youngest player is Eliesse Ben Seghir, aged 19.
Four of these players are at club level in Morocco: Adil Tahif with AS Berkane, Akram Nakach with Union de Touarga, El Mehdi Maouhoub with Raja Casablanca and Rachid Ghanimi with FUS Rabat.
Also of note is the presence of French-Moroccan Sakina Karchaoui, who will be playing for the French women’s team! There is no age limit for women players.
The qualifying rounds will take place on 24, 27 and 30 July. The quarter-finals on 2 August, the semi-finals on 5 August, the third-place play-off on 8 August and the final on 9 August. Book your evenings and your football shirts!
Breaking or Breakdance, for the first time at the Olympic Games
This is a very small competition, with a maximum of 16 men and 16 women taking part, and no more than two per country. Morocco’s Billy (Bilal Mallakh) and Rabtia Elmamouny (Fatima Zahra El Mamouny) both qualified in May at the African championships in Rabat, beating Morocco’s Taoufik Amrani and South Africa’s Midian Leah. So three Moroccans in the championship final!
On 9 and 10 August, at the Place de la Concorde, the two Moroccans will be taking part in a historic event, the first competition in a new discipline in which they will be representing the whole of Africa. Only the United States, China, France, Japan, Ukraine and the Netherlands have managed to qualify two B-Boys or B-Girls.
You can discover Billy on his Instagram account here and his troop The Vikingz here. Elmamouny’s is here. And finally, two videos to help you discover the sport!
The opening ceremony, a Franco-Moroccan-international touch
By a quirk of the calendar, the opening ceremony will take place on 26 July, two days after the first match of the Atlas Cubs.
So the football starts the day after tomorrow!
There has been a lot of talk about Leila Slimani’s involvement in the script for the opening ceremony. Along with other authors, such as Patrick Boucheron, a historian specialising in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (before the modern Olympics, long after the ancient Olympics), Fanny Herrero, known for the series “10%” among other things, and Damien Gabriac, a young writer-actor-director who has produced a show based on Greek mythology, “Les Tantalides”. That doesn’t make it a Moroccan ceremony… but it is an indicator of the desire to open up to the world that is the real hallmark of the Olympic Games.
The secret is well kept, but there is talk of humour, of playing on the image that the French have in the world (baguette-béret), of a reference to Jean-Paul Goude’s ceremony to mark the bi-centenary of the French Revolution (and here I understand Arielle Dombasle’s performance better), of “talking to France about the world and talking to the world about France”.
I’m waiting to see :)
So where can you watch the Olympic Games?
With 99% of Moroccans having access to international channels via IPTv, it won’t be difficult to watch the competitions and ceremonies.
For the main competitions, the finals, the medal ceremonies, etc, there will be a plethora of broadcasts on France 2 or France 3, but also on Eurosport. And in Morocco, La 5 and BeinSport will be broadcasting the events.
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