Hollywood superstars with a sporting chance in Paris

You may not know it but there’s a huge team of athletes and sporting champions among Tinseltown’s line-up of actors, actresses, reality TV stars and pop idols. What better way to add a little showbiz to the Olympics than to have the likes of J-Lo, George Clooney, Zendaya and Jennifer Aniston going for gold?

Here we select the very first Tinseltown team of Olympians and reveal the sporting prowess hidden behind their celebrity.

CYCLING

There are plenty of celebs who have real pedal power. JENNIFER ANISTON used to cycle for a living back in the days when she was a struggling actor and working in New York as a bike messenger. Now the 55-year-old actress cycles to keep fit. MATT DAMON takes things a little more seriously. The 53-year-old star has competed in a number of endurance races and was once hotly tipped to play shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong in a biopic.

SWIMMING

Former Friends star COURTNEY COX is also a mean mover in the pool. While a student at Mountain Brook High School, New York, she won a state swimming competition but gave up her sporting ambition for modelling and then acting.

CANOEING

Thanks to his adventures in Middle Earth for Lord of the Rings trilogy ORLANDO BLOOM is a bit of a canoe ace. As well as training with knives, horseback riding and archery for his role as Legolas, Bloom also had intensive training on the water. “It’s not as easy as you might think,” says the 47-year-old heartthrob who is married to KATY PERRY. “Just going in a straight line is pretty hard.”

ATHLETICS

There’s a galaxy of stars fit to line up on the track. GEORGE CLOONEY was a track champion at school, as was Loki star TOM HIDDLESTON. Even now, Hollywood hunk MARK WAHLBERG still longs to pull on his spikes and play the running man. “In a perfect world, I would be a professional athlete,” he says. “But I ventured off into other worlds.” HALLE BERRY is no slouch, having picked up medals for her track triumphs in her teens but there is only one true track and field star in Tinseltown.

ARCHERY

JENNIFER LAWRENCE could also maybe make the grade after all that training the endured for her role as Katniss Everdean in The Hunger Games movies. Four-time Olympic archer Khatuna Lorig who trained her says Jen could have turned professional. JEREMY RENNER and HAILEE STEINFELD also went through intensive archery training for Marvel’s Hawkeye meaning both are a target for Team Hollywood.

TENNIS

ZENDAYA aced her training for 2024 hit movie Challengers to such a degree that in another world, she may have been a real challanger on the court. The 27-year-old Spider-Man and Dune star wowed the pro tennis coaches who trained her for the film with one saying she had untapped talent. “Before making this movie, I really wasn’t much of a tennis fan,” says Zendaya. “Now, I totally am. It’s a fascinating sport and a really interesting world. I want to keep on playing if I can.

GYMNASTICS

Before she became a music and movie superstar JENNIFER LOPEZ was star of her school gym. The young Latina trained as a gymnast at high school and so impressed her Bronx buddies they nicknamed her “La Guitar” because her body curved like a guitar. As for gymnastic guys, look no further than Officer and a Gentleman RICHARD GERE. The 75-year-old star won a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts before hitting Hollywood.

WRESTLING

We’ve found two movie heavyweights to grapple for Tinseltown in the ring. Jurassic World star CHRIS PRATT was a champion wrestler in high school as was TOM CRUISE.“I was in the school wrestling team and used to be pretty good,” says Tom. “But I injured my knee and that was that so I turned to acting.”

BOXING

There are more star contenders for this event than any other, with the likes of RUSSELL CROWE, WILL SMITH, HILARY SWANK and ROBERT DENIRO, who have all amazed their coaches by slugging it out almost as good as the pros for movie roles. But there’s only one Hollywood star who can claim to be a real king of the ring. 9½ Weeks star MICKEY ROURKE had 26 amateur fights in the 1970s and then quit when his acting career took off.

EQUESTRIAN

KENDALL JENNER gallops into Team Tinseltown with her ongoing dream to go to the Olympics for real. The 28-year-old supermodel wants to follow in the footsteps of her Olympian father, Caitlyn, by going for gold on horseback. “I would love to be in the Olympics riding horses. I have horses but I don’t get to ride as much as I used to, unfortunately. I’d love to go the Olympics and keep that going in my family. My dad would be very proud.” Fellow model BELLA HADID also trained up to Olympic standard but had to give up riding due to her battle with Lyme Disease.