What do DNS and DNF mean at the Olympics 2024?
The Olympic Games – home of athletes, action and acronyms.
Aside from a DQ, representing a disqualification, the two acronyms perhaps most commonly seen at the Olympics which athletes and sports fans alike hate to see next to the names of anyone representing their country are 'DNS' and 'DNF'.
The two acronyms would most likely be seen on scoreboards displayed in stadiums or on TV, as well as in official results documents, beside an athlete's name and in place of their time or other result.
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Some more positive codes include 'Q', meaning the athlete has qualified from the heat to advance to the next round of the competition; 'SB', meaning the result is the athlete’s season best performance; 'OR', meaning the athlete has set a new Olympic Games record; and, of course, 'WR' when there is a world record broken.
But what about those pesky other two that nobody wants to see?
RadioTimes.com explains what DNS and DNF mean at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
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What does DNS mean at the Olympics?
DNS stands for "did not start", and is the acronym used at the Olympics when an athlete is scheduled to compete in an event but withdraws before it starts and therefore does not compete.
Perhaps most commonly seen in the popular track and field events which feature heavily in television coverage of the Games, DNS is also used for the same reason at other sporting events, such as the World Athletics Championships.
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, athletes who tested positive for Covid-19 and had to miss the event they were entered in were commonly listed as DNS, although this varied slightly on a sport-by-sport basis.
One high-profile example of a DNS at the last Olympics came in the qualifying heats of the men’s 1,500m track event, when American and then-NCAA record holder Yared Nuguse pulled out at the last minute due to a muscle strain in his quadricep.
What does DNF mean at the Olympics?
DNF stands for "did not finish", and is the acronym used at the Olympics when an athlete starts an event and fails to complete it.
This is classed differently to a disqualification, where more often athletes finish the event but are deemed by judges or officials to have broken the rules somewhere along the line.
DNFs could happen for more than one reason, but are perhaps most commonly associated with an athlete pulling up injured and therefore being unable to continue in the event in which they have already started competing.
Uganda’s 2012 Olympic gold medallist marathon runner Stephen Kiprotich was a high-profile example of an athlete suffering a DNF at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, having dropped out before the halfway point of that marathon race.
DNFs have also happened to top athletes at recent Winter Olympic Games, such as American skier Mikaela Shiffrin: at Beijing 2022, the two-time Olympic champion missed a gate in the slalom event twice in a row, meaning she registered a DNF.
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