Just over a month before the start of the Olympic Games of Paris 2024, which will be inaugurated on Friday, July 26 with a massive ceremony on the Seine River, the Argentine delegation has secured 44 places. In total they are 130 athletes distributed in 22 different sports.
And, as usual, Team competitions are those that arouse the greatest hope of winning medals. The last to achieve classification was the men’s team of volleyballwhich was favored by a series of results that occurred in the third week of action of the Volleyball Nations League (VNL), in Ljubljana, Slovenia: they defeated Turkey and then received help from the local team, which beat Cuba, one of their direct rivals in the race for the Games.
“Yesterday all the boys stayed watching the Slovenia-Cuba match at night. At times we were nervous because it was a very close match, but luckily they gave us help and we started to celebrate. “It’s an immense happiness,” said Luciano Palonsky, a 24-year-old wide receiver, in conversation with ESPN from the Slovenian capital.
This way, The Argentine team will be Olympic for the fourth consecutive time, what he had never achieved before. After being absent from Beijing 2008, they competed in the editions of London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016, Tokyo 2020 – held in 2021 due to the pandemic – and now they will compete between July 27 and August 11 in Paris, where they will seek to repeat the third place obtained three years ago in the Japanese capital and also in Seoul 1988.
Another great candidate to add to the medal table is the under 23 soccer team. With Julian Alvarez, Nicolas Otamendi and probably also Draw Martinez as the three over 23 years old that are allowed when making the list of 18 players, Javier Mascherano He also has another world champion at his disposal like Thiago Almada.
Argentina, which will share group B with Morocco, Iraq and Ukraine, could also have players with a great presence in Argentine football and with European projection such as Equi Fernández, Kevin Zenón, Claudio little devil Echeverri, Luciano Gondou and Marco Di Césare. All of them were called up for the two friendlies played at the beginning of the month against Paraguay on the Huracán field.
Besides, Lucas Beltran (Fiorentina), Santiago Hezze (Olympiacos) and Santiago Castro (Bologna), with continuity in their respective clubs in Europe, are excited to repeat the gold of Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008.
The men’s rugby sevens team, defending the bronze medal, also generates great expectations. Despite the sanction imposed on Rodrigo Isgro, who will miss the first three games and could reappear in the decisive instances, and the uncertainty due to the shoulder dislocation of Joaquín Pellandini, the team led by Santiago Gomez Cora He proved with results to be one of the best in the world and a serious threat to anyone.
They will also say present in Paris 2024 those selected (male and female) from field hockey, a sport with tradition in the country. Argentina has accumulated six medals since the 2000 Sydney Games inclusive, which is only surpassed by the Netherlands (9) in this same period. There are three silver and two bronze from Las Leonas that add to the title of Los Leones in Rio 2016.
Meanwhile, Los Gladiadores, the men’s team of handballis far from being a power like the rest of the sports mentioned, but it managed to qualify again for the Olympic event and intends to do battle in a group B that it will share with Denmark, Norway, Hungary, France and Egypt.
