Worldwide TV broadcasting by satellite; a big leap for the pole vault with fibre glass poles; and swimming with timing touch pads fixed to the pool walls… But also the last athletics races at the Games on a cinder track – the Games in Tokyo served as a springboard to the future… to the next edition, in 2020!

Sam Kendricks, Armand Duplantis and Piotr Lisek have been the stars of the pole vault season, each surpassing the fabled 6m mark at least once and delivering spectacular performances in the final of the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, in which Kendricks emerged victorious. We can’t wait to see them back in action in Tokyo next year, and they’re not the only ones: the performances of reigning Olympic champion Thiago Braz da Silva from Brazil and world record-holder Renaud Lavillenie from France are also hotly anticipated. 

For the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa directed a film that has gone down in Olympic history. The Japanese filmmaker opted for an artistic approach to showcase the beauty and intensity of sport, its joys and exertions, and the faces of athletes from all over the world, in a lyrical work of stylistic beauty that has left a truly lasting impression.   

By George Hirthler

Bjorgvin Pall Gustavsson felt the heartache that goes with missing out on a place in an Olympic squad but used it to fuel his ambition to appear on sport’s greatest stage – and did so for the first time at a remarkable stage in his career...

The favourite going into the Moscow Games, the British decathlete delivered a series of top-level performances 39 years ago, on 26 and 27 July 1980, to win his first Olympic title. In the years that followed, he took gold at the European and World Championships and the Commonwealth Games, before retaining his Olympic title at Los Angeles 1984, setting a world record that would last for eight years. He is one of the greatest champions in the combined event’s history, which stretches back over a century.

A winner of both the pentathlon and decathlon with outstanding performances at the 1912 Games, a high-level baseballer, American footballer and basketballer, not to mention actor – Jim Thorpe is recognised as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. One hundred and seven years ago, he amazed the public and his rivals with his feats in the pentathlon and decathlon.

Youth Olympic Games (YOG) athletes continued to shine on the global sporting stage. Here, olympic.org looks at some of the highlights over the last month…