Meredith Blake, Greg Braxton, Matt Brennan, Tracy Brown, Maira Garcia and Robert Lloyd | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Every two years, athletes from around the globe gather to compete at the Olympic Games. And every two years, stories emerge that capture the world’s attention, from the tragic to the triumphant.

With the Summer Olympics set to begin in Paris on Friday, key storylines are already emerging.

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There is Simone Biles’ much-anticipated return to Olympic gymnastics three years after she withdrew from the Tokyo Games. There is the question of how the wars in Ukraine and Gaza might disrupt the facade of international unity. There’s even concern about pollution in the River Seine, which may be too full of sewage to provide a safe venue for long-distance swimming events — though the Paris mayor took a dip recently to prove it was safe.

Whatever the Big Narrative of 2024 turns out to be, it will likely get the documentary treatment at some point in the future. The human drama of the Olympics — from the athletes who participate in them to the controversies that sometimes overshadow the competition — have been fodder for nonfiction filmmakers since at least 1912.

To help you get ready for the games, The Times TV team has compiled a list of Olympic-themed documentaries available to stream, including moving tales of human triumph and infuriating accounts of systemic corruption, and cautionary tales of nationalistic myth-making.

‘Simone Biles Rising’

When Simone Biles withdrew from the Tokyo Games three years ago, citing a mental block known as “the twisties” that made it difficult for her to control her body in the air, it wasn’t clear whether the celebrated gymnast, then 24, would ever return to Olympic competition. Now 27, in a sport long dominated by teenage girls, she is poised to make a historic comeback at the Paris Games. The first two episodes of this four-part Netflix documentary, directed by Katie Walsh, follow Biles as she returns to the gym and gradually regains her bearings — with support from her husband, NFL player Jonathan Owens, family and teammates. The documentary looks at the connections between Biles’ psychological struggles and the sexual abuse and racism that she endured, and retraces the brutal history of a sport that can be as toxic as it is dazzling. Funny and thoughtful, Biles comes across as a relatable young woman who happens to be able to perform superhuman feats. Two additional episodes, coming this fall, will follow Biles in Paris. The end of Biles’ story has yet to be written, but whether she wins or loses at the games, she makes for a compelling subject. (Stream on Netflix.)  — Meredith Blake

U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, middle, and John Carlos raise their gloved fists in the Black Power salute during the U.S. national anthem after receiving their medals for first and third place in the men’s 200-meter event at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games on Oct. 16, 1968, in Mexico City. At left is Peter Norman of Australia, who took second place. (AFP/Getty Images/TNS)

‘Fists of Freedom: The Story of the ’68 Olympic Games’

The focus of this HBO documentary is on one of those electric — and controversial — moments in Olympic history. Sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos staged a silent salute to Black Power by raising their Black-gloved fists on the victory stand. The athletes’ protest for social justice resulted in an iconic picture and sparked both positive and negative reaction while bringing the racial tension of American politics onto the international stage. The 1999 Peabody Award winner explores the fiery moment, and how it affected the careers of Smith and Carlos. (Stream on Max. ) — Greg Braxton

‘Visions of Eight’

This 1973 anthology film of the 1972 Munich Summer Game set an international group of directors, including Arthur Penn, Miloš Forman, John Schlesinger, Mai Zetterling and Kon Ichikawa, loose on the Olympics, each assigning themselves a subject and working with their own crews. This is less a traditional documentary than a collection of non-narrative tone poems, which abstract the spirit of the games rather than charting any individual story. Some focus on an individual sport, others explore a larger idea, as in Michael Pfleghar’s “The Women”; Yuri Ozerov’s “The Beginning,” which looks at athletes in the moments before they compete; and Claude Lelouch’s “The Losers,” which captures them in the immediate aftermath of their failure. For his segment on the men’s 100-meter finals, a race lasting “about 10 seconds,” Ichikawa employed 34 cameras and 20,000 feet of film. Forman’s comical look at the decathlon is scored with bell ringers and yodelers, while Schlesinger’s intense “The Longest” intermixes the marathon with the attack by Palestinian terrorists on the Israeli quarters in the Olympic Village. It streams as part of Criterion’s 53-film “100 Years of Olympic Films, 1912-2012,” which also includes Ichikawa’s great 1965 “Tokyo Olympiad.” (Stream on the Criterion Channel.) — Robert Lloyd

‘Olympia’

Leni Riefenstahl’s two-part documentary, chronicling the final games held before World War II, is a potent reminder of the power of the Olympic Movement— to whitewash human rights abuses, glamorize repressive regimes, soften dictators’ personas and generally use the International Olympic Committee’s stated mission of promoting “ethics and good governance in sport” to cover up their absence anywhere and everywhere else. After all, with its idolization of the athlete and its paean to the nobility of competition, the German filmmaker‘s kinesthetic epic of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, with its pioneering images of divers breaking the water and runners breaking the tape, can seem pleasantly distant from the circumstances of its making; who wouldn’t wish, in a world marked by economic desperation, social dislocation, technological revolution and authoritarian politics, to keep one’s eyes squarely on the court, ring or field? And yet to do so, as “Olympia” teaches us, is to risk overlooking the shadow of evil, Hitler’s or otherwise, hovering over the stands. Spectacle, the klieg light of the powerful since before even the ancient Olympics, is still more than capable of blinding us to the dark. (Stream on the Criterion Channel and YouTube.) — Matt Brennan

‘Icarus’

This 2017 Oscar winning documentary begins with one objective: Can filmmaker Bryan Fogel improve his performance in an amateur cycling race through the use of performance-enhancing drugs without it being detected? The point isn’t for him to win the race; it was to show how testing for PEDs remained inadequate, years after professional cycling was rocked by Lance Armstrong’s doping case. It leads Fogel to connect with Grigory Rodchenkov, a Russian scientist and then-director of Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory, who creates a doping regimen for him, becoming friends in the process. In the months that follow, Rodchenkov moves to the center of the story as Russia’s state-sponsored doping program is uncovered and he provides incriminating evidence of the government’s involvement to the New York Times, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the IOC. It’s a roller coaster of a film that led to Russia’s ban from Olympic competition and Rodchenkov being placed in witness protection. (Stream on Netflix.) — Maira Garcia

‘Dream On’

The U.S. women’s national basketball team will be competing for a record eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal in Paris. This three-part “30 for 30” doc, released in 2022, tells the story of the team that started that streak at the 1996 Atlanta games and whose success directly led to the formation of the WNBA. And it wasn’t as easy as that team’s 8-0 Olympic record might have you believe. “Dream On” chronicles how lackluster results at back-to-back major international competitions (bronze at the 1992 Barcelona Games and at the 1994 world championship) led to USA Basketball trying something different. With support from the NBA, which was interested in testing the waters for a potential women’s pro league, the organization assembled a women’s version of the Dream Team that trained and competed together for a grueling 14 months leading up to the 1996 games. The doc sheds light on the players’ experiences, personal hardships and more on their road to gold. With the WNBA’s surge in viewership and popularity this season, this is a great look at those who paved the way. (Stream on ESPN+.) — Tracy Brown

‘One Day in September’

This Oscar winning documentary was released a quarter century ago but remains tragically relevant. Directed by Kevin Macdonald, “ One Day in September” looks at the events of Sept. 5 and 6, 1972, when eight members of the terrorist group Black September took a group of Israeli athletes and coaches hostage at the Munich Olympic Games. Twenty-four hours later, 11 Israelis were dead along with a German police officer and five of the Palestinian attackers — an event that marked a bloody inflection point not only in the history of the Olympic Games but also the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continues to rage on decades later. With the brisk pace of a thriller, the film looks at how West German officials who had hoped to recast their country’s image at a time when the horrors of World War II remained vivid in the public imagination, instead bungled their response to the attacks — with tragic results. The documentary features extensive interviews with surviving family members and German officials, as well as Jamal al-Gashey, the last surviving member of the Black September group, who appears in shadow. (Stream on ScreenPix via YouTube.) — Meredith Blake

‘The Price of Gold’

There are few Olympic sagas more sordid — or more engrossing — than that of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, the American figure skaters whose rivalry erupted into one of the most notorious tabloid scandals of the 1990s. Directed by Nanette Burstein, this “30 for 30” film revisits the ordeal that began in January 1994 when Kerrigan was clubbed on the knee just weeks before the Lillehammer games. As the world soon learned, the attack was orchestrated by Harding’s husband, Jeff Gillooly, in a bid to elevate his wife’s Olympic prospects — and financial potential. “The Price of Gold” shrewdly explores how class, gender and body image played out in the Nancy versus Tonya narrative and how Harding, a powerful athlete from a blue-collar background, was often penalized for her aesthetic choices. Kerrigan did not participate in the documentary, which was released in 2014, but Harding did, and she comes across as sympathetic but also maddeningly evasive and defensive. A few years later “I, Tonya” would explore Harding’s story again, but with much less subtlety. (Stream on ESPN+.) — Meredith Blake

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By HOWARD FENDRICH and EDDIE PELLS AP National Writers

Lydia Jacoby was a breakout star in the pool for the United States at the last Summer Games, earning a gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke and a relay silver. Part of what comes to mind from those heady days in Tokyo? “People talking about post-Olympic depression,” she said.

She was 17 at the time, and her initial response when other athletes brought up the topic was: “Well, that doesn’t apply to me.”

“I essentially did not understand the topic of depression,” she said. “It wasn’t until after the Games that I was like, ‘Oh. … OK. Yeah, I’m feeling this a little.’”

FILE – American swimmer Lydia Jacoby, 20, answers questions during an interview, Wednesday April 17, 2024, in New York. Jacoby was a breakout star in the pool for the United States at the last Summer Games, earning a gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke and a relay silver. Part of what comes to mind for Jacoby from those heady days three years ago in Tokyo? “People talking about post-Olympic depression.” (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File)

Jacoby, who didn’t qualify for the 2024 Olympics, is now fully aware of the phenomenon, went through it, moved past it and discusses it casually, all of which points to the way things have changed in just a few years when it comes to mental health.

As the Paris Games open on Friday, followed by the Paralympics beginning Aug. 28, athletes have more access than ever to resources in that once-taboo realm and sound more willing than ever to use them. That seems particularly significant given that Jessica Bartley, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s senior director of psychological services, says about half of the country’s athletes at the past two Olympiads were flagged for at least one of the following: anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, eating disorders, substance use or abuse.

“We really are just a part of the conversation now,” Bartley said, “and not an afterthought or something when someone’s struggling.”

Among the key questions now: Is everyone going to seek the help they need? And is enough help available?

As for the first, Bartley said: “I’d like to think we’re over the hump, but we’re still not quite there. I feel like there is still some stigma. I think there’s still some connections to ‘weakness.’”

And the second? “I do think there still could be more,” track star Gabby Thomas said, “but, I mean, they’re there.”

FILE – Jessica Bartley, senior director of psychological services at USOPC, listens during a press conference at the Olympic media summit, Monday, April 15, 2024, in New York. Bartley says about half of the country’s athletes at the past two Olympiads were flagged for at least one of the following: anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, eating disorders, substance use/abuse. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File)

Olympians Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka and Michael Phelps opened doors

Three Olympians — Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka, who participated in the last pandemic-delayed Summer Games, and are returning, and retired swimmer Michael Phelps, who has more medals than anyone in any sport — provided some of the loudest voices in the growing global conversation in sports and society at large about the importance of protecting, gauging and improving the state of one’s mind as much as one’s body.

Phelps spoke about having suicidal thoughts at the height of his career and helped produce a documentary about depression among Olympians. He also called on the International Olympic Committee and USOPC to do more.

“I do think there’s something to be said when a lot of really, really good athletes kind of talk about the same issue. I know all athletes don’t feel the same way; you have to be a certain type or in a certain head space. Some people just feel things differently,” said Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and former No. 1-ranked player in tennis who lit the cauldron in Japan.

She’s been forthcoming about her bouts with anxiety and depression and was among the first sports figures to take mental-health breaks away from competition, paving the way for others.

Osaka, in turn, said she felt “very heard” when she listened to Biles and Phelps.

“I’m pretty sure a lot of different athletes also felt heard,” Osaka said. “They didn’t feel like it was a weakness or anything like that, so I’m really glad we all talked about it.”

Biles, who redefined excellence in gymnastics and picked up seven Olympic medals along the way, drew attention and, from some, criticism, for pulling out of events in Tokyo because of a mental block — known in the gymnastics world as “the twisties” — that made her afraid to attempt certain dangerous moves.

That her explanations of what went awry came in such a public setting, as THE biggest star in Tokyo, only made it all the more meaningful to other athletes.

“She didn’t have to,” said basketball player Breanna Stewart, a WNBA MVP. “She used her platform to help others.”

What Biles did resonated with athletes like canoeist Nevin Harrison, a gold medalist in Tokyo, who said “anxiety, fear, stress … are all going to be huge parts in competing at such a high level.”

Biles made them see that there can be a way out.

“I was, at one time, in those shoes,” boxer Morelle McCane said, “where I was just like, ‘It’s do or die! It’s do or die!’”

FILE – United States’Janet Evans leans on the lane ropes after finishing her heat in the women’s 400 meter freestyle at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Monday, July 22, 1996. Evans won four swimming golds at the 1988 and 1992 Games and recalls the never-easing pressure to perform. In her day, she says, there was nowhere near as much empathy or as many outlets as are available to today’s Olympians. (AP Photo/David Longstreath, File)

How different is it for today’s Olympians?

Janet Evans won four swimming golds at the 1988 and 1992 Games and recalls the never-easing pressure to perform. In her day, she says, there wasn’t nearly the empathy or outlets for help available as there are for today’s Olympians.

“We didn’t talk about the struggles. No one taught me that it was OK to lose, right? I mean, I was Janet Evans, and when I went to a swim meet, I was supposed to win,” said Evans, the chief athlete officer for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “We talk about it now and we recognize it with our athletes. And I think that is an important first step.”

Which means that even 38-year-old rugby player Perry Baker has seen changes since his Olympic debut at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

“You had to tough it out. You kind of felt by yourself. You kind of felt like you couldn’t talk to anyone,” said Baker, who briefly was with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles.

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The balance national Olympic committees must strike between caring about athletes as people but making sure the medals pile up is “threading a needle,” Evans acknowledged.

“We should go to the Olympics and Paralympics and win medals. But I don’t think that should be at the cost of how we’re preparing our athletes for the future,” Evans said. “Both can happen.”

That’s where Bartley and her counterparts in other countries and at the IOC come in.

The Beijing Winter Games two years ago were the first with extra credentials issued for national Olympic committees to bring athlete welfare officers — registered mental health professionals or qualified safeguarding experts — and more than 170 from more than 90 countries will be in Paris.

“We didn’t have it in Tokyo, and now it will be implemented for every Games,” said Kirsty Burrows, head of an IOC unit focused on athletes’ mental health. “Because we really see the impact.”

There will be a 24/7 helpline with mental health counselors who speak more than 70 languages, a program started for the Beijing Games but now available to every Olympian and Paralympian until four years after the event. There’s also AI to monitor athletes’ social media for cyberbullying, and a “mind zone” in the athletes village with a yoga area, low lighting, comfortable seating and other tools “dedicated to disconnection, decompression,” Burrows said.

The USOPC went from six mental-health providers 3 1/2 years ago to 15 now; 14 will be in France. Last year, 1,300 Team USA athletes participated in more than 6,000 therapy sessions set up by the USOPC.

“I expect the numbers to be even higher,” Bartley said, “especially in a Games year.”

There’s so much we love about France.

The short list would definitely include the beaches, the art, the history, the food, the tennis, the architecture and — without a doubt — the music.

It’s the latter we are going to concern ourselves with here, as we offer up some suggestions for those creating their own special French music playlists just in time for the 2024 Olympics kicking off in Paris.

There are a lot of different ways we could have played this, ranging from the traditional Parisian music we often encounter in period-piece movies to more avant-garde and modern offerings.

We decided to go with a mix of styles, with the common theme being that this is all music we’d want to listen to even if it weren’t an Olympic year. Note: This is not necessarily rah-rah music meant to pump you up for the games — although some of the artists and songs may indeed accomplish that feat — but rather just selections to put you in the mood to enjoy your time (presumably via TV or the internet) in Paris this summer.

So here are eight of our favorite French acts, each with some recommended songs. Find out which ones you like and then go ahead and draw up your own Paris Olympics playlist.

We’ll kick things off with one of the country’s most widely known artists.

Serge Gainsbourg: The fact that he courted so much controversy during his lifetime — with his sexually provocative music and themes — often overshadows his staggering level of talent and widespread influence. Yet, the way he was able to so seamlessly mix chanson, jazz, funk, world music and other styles was truly astounding. Gainsbourg, who died in 1991 at the age of 62, should be regarded as nothing short of one of the greatest artists in French pop history.

Recommended songs: “Mambo miam miam,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “L’anamour,” “La javanaise,” “Baudelaire”

Gojira: If you don’t know Gojira then you don’t know the greatest heavy metal band to rise to prominence in the 21st century. The group released the epic full-length debut “Terra Incognita” in 2001 and, from that point on, it’s been one face-meltingly awesome platter after another. This outfit rocks super hard, holding its own on bills with Metallica and other legends of the genre, but it also knows how to groove and add some cool prog elements to the mix. Don’t miss Gojira when it performs with Korn at Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View on Oct. 6 (livenation.com).

Recommended songs: “Amazonia,” “Born in Winter,” “The Heaviest Matter of the Universe,” “Flying Whales,” “Born for One Thing”

Françoise Hardy: An absolutely mesmerizing French singer-songwriter, who also crooned in Italian, German and English, Hardy released more than 30 albums during a career that stretched from the early ’60s until very recent times. She died just last month at the age of 80, leaving behind so many wonderful songs and albums. Hardy was one of the leading proponents of the ’60s yé-yé movement, which derived its name from the English words “yeah, yeah” and its sound from American and British rock bands of the era.

Recommended songs: “Suzanne” (an amazing cover of the Leonard Cohen song), “Comment te dire adieu,” “L’amitie,” “Mon amour adieu,” “Le temps de l’amour”

Air: The vastly acclaimed electronic music duo out of Versailles — featuring masterminds Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel — has released so many good albums over the years. Yet, the one that we keep going back to again and again is the gorgeous soundtrack to “The Virgin Suicides,” Sofia Coppola’s landmark film from 1999 that starred Kirsten Dunst. It’s nothing short of one of the finest ambient chill-out records ever recorded. Air performs Oct. 2 at the Masonic in San Francisco (livenation.com).

Recommended songs: “Playground Love,” “All I Need,” “Highschool Lover,” “Ghost Song,” “Cherry Blossom Girl”

Booba: After getting his start in the hip-hop duo Lunatic in the mid-’90s, Élie Thitia Yaffa — vastly better known by the stage name Booba — went on to firmly establish himself as a solo artist with a long string of hot-selling albums, including such platinum-plus outings as “Ouest Side” (2006) and “Futur” (2012). Booba has flow for days and his records benefit from absolutely stellar production work.

Recommended songs: “Saga,” “Mona Lisa,” “Kalash,” “Drapeau Noir,” “Ridin’”

Carla Bruni: She has a fascinating backstory, which includes the years (2008-2012) she spent as the first lady of France (the wife of then-president Nicolas Sarkozy). Yet that has nothing to do with why we are recommending her music. Instead, Bruni makes our list because her voice is so incredibly striking on such albums as 2003’s “Quelqu’un m’a dit” and 2007’s “No Promises.” Plus, she’s so good at covering other people’s music.

Recommended songs: “Chanson triste,” “Moon River,” “Quelqu’un m’a dit,” “Miss You,” “Enjoy the Silence”

MC Solaar: One of the France’s most heavily championed hip-hop stars, Claude Honoré M’Barali — aka, MC Solaar — just keeps right on releasing hit records. The short list would include such top sellers as the 1997 chart-topper “Paradisiaque” as well as 2001’s “Cinquième As” and 2003’s “Mach 6.” Having been in the game since the 1980s, Solaar has long been one of the top global ambassadors of French-language rap.

Recommended songs: “Da Vinci Claude,” “La Belle et le Bad Boy,” “Okay,” “Caroline,” “Le depart”

Alcest: The Bagnols-sur-Cèze-born band has a terrific sound, mixing black metal, post-metal, shoegaze and even ambient elements in some truly mesmerizing ways. And that sound has rarely translated better than on Alcest’s newly released offering, “Les Chants de l’Aurore” (translation: “The Songs of Dawn”), which follows 2019’s critically acclaimed “Spiritual Instinct.”

Recommended songs: “Flamme Jumelle,” L’Envol,” “Sapphire,” “Autre Temps,” “Onyx,” “Le Miroir”