The Olympic Games always produces bolts from the blue and Paris 2024 promises to transform unknown athletes into household names within the blink of an eye.

In Tokyo, Team GB athletes won medals in 18 sports, the most of any nation ever.

While stronghold sports promise to deliver multiple medals once more, podium hopes come from a variety of places in the French capital.

Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe – Artistic Swimming, Duet

Great Britain have never won an Olympic medal in artistic swimming. Enter a pair of bubbly best friends from Bristol who have ripped up the rule books and rewritten history, heading to Paris with a strong medal chance.

Shortman and Thorpe, whose mothers swam together in a duet and nearly qualified for the 1996 Olympics, finished 14th in Tokyo but have since taken huge leaps forward.

Shortman won Britain’s first-ever medal at the World Championships with solo bronze in 2023 and the dynamic duo clinched silver and bronze at February’s Worlds to qualify for the Olympics. They also won the Test Event at the Paris Olympic Aquatics Centre.

There are plenty of reasons for the rise: a welcome injection of Lottery funding, a pioneering new coach in Yumiko Tomomatsu and judging changes that bend in their favour, making the sport less subjective.

Even Team GB Chef de Mission Mark England is getting excited: “Kate and Izzy have done this alone, they haven’t had anyone to look to and they are complete pioneers in their sport. For these two to win a medal would be a serious story, it would be incredible.”

Ben Pattison – Athletics, Men’s 800m

British middle-distance running is red-hot right now, but Pattison’s rapid improvement still risks flying under the radar.

The 22-year-old broke through with World Championship bronze in Budapest last summer, GB’s first medal in the event since Peter Elliott in 1987.

It came three years after he found his heart rate rocketing to 246 beats per minute during a training session and subsequently underwent surgery for Wolff-Parkinson-White, a condition where the heart beats abnormally fast. Pattison really is as steely as they come – he missed his grandmother’s funeral to punch a ticket to Paris at the UK Championships in June.

Algerian Djamel Sedjati has blown the event apart in recent weeks, becoming the third fastest man in history at Monaco Diamond League, but Pattison finished fifth in a stunning 1:42.27 that saw him climb above Steve Cram to sit second behind Seb Coe on the British all-time list.

2022 world 1500m champion Jake Wightman’s presence in the 800m field will capture the headlines but Pattison is arguably the leader of a crack British triumvirate that also includes fearless front-runner Max Burgin.

Amber Anning – Athletics, Women’s 400m

There is a rich history of quarter-mile running in the UK and Christine Ohuruogu has provided Britain’s women with long-term mentorship to help extend that legacy.

Step forward Anning, whose times plunge her into the mix for a podium place in the 400m and whose running style is nothing short of magisterial.

Born in Brighton but forged in NCAA competition with Arkansas Razorbacks, Anning truly announced herself by lowering Katharine Merry’s 25-year-old British indoor record for 200m in January.

She has pulled up trees over one lap outdoors, too, with 49.51s in May putting her third on the British all-time list behind only Kathy Cook and Ohuruogu herself. There can be no doubting her ability to convert standout college performances to strong displays in Europe, either, after her commanding victory at the UK Championships.

With Sydney McLaughlin and Femke Bol focusing on a duel in the 400m hurdles, medals are up for grabs in the 400m flat with Anning’s personal best enough for silver at the 2023 World Championships.

With Anning having helped GB to women’s 4x400m bronze in Budapest last summer, hopes will be high in the relays too.

Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen – Diving, Women’s Synchro Springboard

Team GB have not won silverware on the first day of Olympic competition in 20 years.

That could all change this time around with Harper and Mew Jensen among the leading contenders in the second medal event of the entire Games, wrapped up by midday on opening day.

Their synchro pairing was only formed in 2022 when Harper stepped in for the injured Desharne Bent-Ashmeil to combine with Mew Jensen, who made her Olympic debut in the individual event in Tokyo.

They won silver at the 2023 World Championships to qualify for the Games and backed that up with global bronze in February. They have bonded quickly, and synchronise their nail art as well as their dives.

Having been burned by Tom Daley and Matty Lee denying them a clean sweep of Olympic titles three years ago, China are doubling down on a full set of seven gold medals in the sport. Harper and Mew Jensen are unlikely to be able to deny Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen who have won – wait for it – 10 successive global finals on the spin.

But along with Australia and USA, they will be firmly in the mix for the other medals.

Ros Canter – Equestrian, Eventing

Canter has had to be patient to get her Olympic chance. She went through the ordeal of being a travelling reserve in Tokyo, despite having been crowned double world champion in 2018.

The Lincolnshire native regularly competes two world-class horses in Allstar B and 12-year-old Lordships Graffalo, a horse she has trained since he was three. Canter now finally gets her shot at gold, set to trot out on board the latter at Château de Versailles with medals on the mind.

Canter was on career-best form in 2023, claiming an emotional maiden victory at Badminton Horse Trials and taking individual and team gold at the European Championships.

Incredibly, more than half of the world’s top 30 eventers are British. Canter and Lordships Graffalo pose a keen threat in the individual event and the team seem untouchable, with Canter joined by Tokyo gold medallists Laura Collett and Tom McEwen.

Luke Whitehouse – Gymnastics, Floor

Team GB’s squad selection in men’s gymnastics has raised a few eyebrows. It does not include a history-maker in Courtney Tulloch, who featured in every single major Championship in the Olympic cycle, or the ultimate team player in James Hall.

It does feature Whitehouse, who has bolted into the five-strong squad with a series of remarkable performances that make him a strong medal hope in the floor exercise.

The 22-year-old didn’t have to look far for inspiration as a youngster, growing up taking part in training routines for Nile Wilson’s popular YouTube Channel and sharing facilities with the Rio bronze medallist at Leeds Gymnastics Club.

Whitehouse, whose ability to perform a triple back somersault marks him out from the field, burst onto the scene with European Championship gold on floor in 2023. After an injury to Max Whitlock, his childhood hero, he was called up for the 2024 edition and became the first British gymnast to ever defend a continental title. Now for Paris, where anything feels possible.

Men’s Hockey

Fuelled by golden memories of a penalty shootout at Rio 2016, British hockey has been dominated by women in recent years. Bookended by bronze medals at London 2012 and Tokyo 2020, the women have won medals at three successive Games and created a dynasty almost unparalleled for Britain in team sports at the Olympics.

The balance extends to sponsorship – the GB men’s team and domestic league haven’t been able to strike a commercial deal, while the women have been backed by Vitality for several years.

In this Olympiad, the dial has shifted back towards the men. They have built a brand based on ‘Bazball’, now sporting shorthand for a fearless, attacking mentality and have produced impressive results in the process.

It is a philosophy espoused by South African head coach Paul Revington, who makes Mikel Arteta’s touchline manner seem subdued, with players speaking of ‘brutal’ training sessions at their Bisham Abbey training base.

Playing as England, the team secured their first European medal in 14 years with silver in 2023 and finished third in the FIH Pro League, the sport’s top-level circuit. Whisper it quietly but hockey could be coming home again.

Kerenza Bryson – Modern Pentathlon, Women

Bryson doesn’t do things by halves.

A medal-winner in modern pentathlon, a sport comprising swimming, fencing, horse riding, shooting and running, she became an Olympian while studying to become a doctor and working in the Army Reserves.

Drawn to chaos, the Plymouth star is preparing for a life on the NHS front line but only after she has duked it out for medals at Paris 2024.

Bryson was crowned European champion last week in the ultimate confidence boost on the eve of the Games and picked up World Championship silver in Bath last year to seal a spot at her maiden Olympics.

Italians Elena Micheli and Alice Sotero are setting the standard but Bryson has a live chance of going down in history, with horse-riding controversially set to be replaced by obstacle course racing for LA 2028.

Micky Beckett – Sailing, ILCA 7

Consistency is the golden ticket in sailing, where the brutal nature of the ocean waves mean no two days are the same.

Pembrokeshire’s Beckett has come closer than most to mastering the vagaries of a sport in which Great Britain are the most successful nation in Olympic history.

The 29-year-old races in the ILCA 7, a small dinghy that he describes as an ‘absolute dinosaur’, with no modifications allowed to the 40 crafts that will take to the Olympic course.

Beckett started sailing aged five, joined the British national squad in 2013 and has finally got his Olympic chance with sailing events set for Marseille Marina.

He has built a superb body of work in the last four years, winning silver and bronze at successive World Championships, reaching the podium at the Test Event and taking victory at the prestigious French Olympic Week regatta. Aussie arch-rival and reigning Olympic champion Matt Wearn may be the only man who can stop him winning gold on debut.

Angharad Evans – Swimming, Women’s 100m Breaststroke

British swimming has no shortage of stars on the men’s side but it has been searching for a standard-bearer among the women since Rio 2016.

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With top contenders largely absent, Laura Stephens and Freya Colbert became world champions in Doha in February in the 200m butterfly and 400m medley respectively, the first British women since Rebecca Adlington in 2011 to stand atop the global podium.

An individual Olympic medal in a women’s event could come from an even more unlikely source in Evans, who has taken great leaps this year but is unknown to all of those outside swimming circles.

Born in Cambridge, Evans swam for the University of Georgia and won European junior medals in 2018. She has settled in a crack training group in Stirling, led by Duncan Scott and coach Steven Tigg, and in April broke Molly Renshaw’s British record with 1:05.54 at a low-key exhibition meet.

That performance leaves Evans ranked sixth in the world in Olympic year and just a few tenths of a second shy of the very best. Evans will also be instrumental to medal chances in the medley relays.

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