The delegation of athletes who will represent Mexico at the 2024 Paris Olympics next month was given a send-off this week at the National Palace at a ceremony presided over by outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
More than 100 competitors will seek to improve on the medal haul of eight achieved in London 2012, Mexico’s best showing at an Olympics outside this country. As the host nation in 1968, Mexico won nine medals, including three golds.
The Mexican delegation has good reason to be optimistic. At the 2023 Pan American Games held in Santiago, Chile, Mexico finished third in the medal table, with 52 gold medals, surpassed only by the United States (124) and Brazil (64).
Speaking on behalf of the athletes at the ceremony was 20-year-old springboard diver Osmar Olvera Ibarra, a triple gold medallist in Santiago, and one of Mexico’s brightest medal prospects in Paris. “ I am sure that Mexico will deliver a performance in Paris worth remembering for several generations,” he said.
Lopez Obrador handed the Mexican flag to Jalisco diver Alejandra Orozco, a medallist in London 2012 and Tokyo 2020. She will carry the tricolor at the opening ceremony in Paris, along with pentathlete Emiliano Hernández, another strong medal hopeful who won a silver medal at the 2023 Pentathlon World Championships held in Bath, England.
The president announced that the athletes would receive financial compensation for their efforts, including attractive bonuses for medallists, but did not specify how much will be offered.