Team PT is ready for the 2024 Olympic Games
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa received the Portuguese athletes who will be at the Paris2024 Olympic Games and asked them to be ambassadors of Portugal and peace.
74 Portuguese athletes will compete in 15 sports at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris from 26 July to 11 August 2024.
For the first time, there are more women (37) than men (36) on the Portuguese Olympic team. It is also the largest female contingent ever at the Olympic Games. 36 (48.6%) of the 74 athletes are newcomers to the competition.
Since the nation’s official debut in the competition in 1912, Portuguese athletes have appeared in every edition of the Summer Olympic Games. The best Portuguese participation in the competition was precisely in the previous edition, at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, in which the Portuguese Olympic Committee achieved 4 Olympic medals and 15 diplomas.
Athletics is the sport with largest contingent (23 athletes), followed by cycling (9) and judo (7).
Fernando Pimenta (canoeing) and Ana Cabecinha (racewalking) will be Portugal’s standard bearers at the Paris Olympic Games.
Pimenta is participating in the Olympic Games for the fourth time, having already won the bronze medal in K1 1,000 meters in Tokyo 2020 (disputed in 2021), and the silver medal in K2 1,000 meters in London 2012, together with Emanuel Silva. Cabecinha is now preparing for his fifth participation in the Olympic Games, where she will compete in the 20-kilometer walk.
On Monday, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa received the athletes at the Belem Palace to demonstrate his gratitude for their achievements.
“Gratitude to each and everyone who in the last three years did everything to ensure that we are as we will be in France to defend Portugal and to promote peace”, said the head of state, guaranteeing that the athletes who “fought, fought, fought”, but that didn't get through are in their thoughts.
He added: "“In a world that is a world of hate, a world of disagreement, of intolerance, sometimes indifference, of confrontation, of war, Portugal wanted to be, wants to be a bearer of the message of peace. We have always been platforms between oceans, continents, and we try to be better or worse, but we always try to be carriers of this message, of opening avenues of peace.”