Across the UK, sofa Olympians hunker down. We are the real heroes of the Paris Games

‘I talked to my mother about the Canadian hammer throw winner, about whether his less bulky frame gave him more speed.’ Ethan Katzberg of Canada in action, 4 August 2024. Photograph: Paweł Kopczyński/Reuters

The 2024 Paris Olympics is almost over, and what a whirlwind few weeks it has been. Records have been broken, and hearts, too. We’ve cheered on household names – Simone Biles, Rafael Nadal, Katie Ledecky – and learned a suite of new ones.

There was Julien Alfred, the first gold medallist from St Lucia and, as the winner of the 100m race, the fastest woman on Earth; Arshad Nadeem, the record-setting javelin thrower and Pakistan’s first gold medallist in 40 years; and in cycling, the British team sprint trio, Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane, who showed that three really is the magic number when they broke a trio of world records on the way to gold. And that’s before we even get to the stars who won the internet.