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Paris 2024 Olympics day one: Evenepoel and Brown take time trial golds – live | Paris Olympic Games 2024

July 27, 2024

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Evenepoel is doubled over in tears. There’s a lot to be said for holding your nerve when going in as the raging hot favourite, as he did. So many have struggled with those expectations on this bigger and different stage but he’s nailed it. Well played.

GOLD for Belgium! Remco Evenepoel is the Olympic champion

The world champ has enough of a buffer, getting to the line 14 seconds ahead of his Italian competitor. The bronze also goes to Belgium, Wout van Aert is third.

Cycling, Men’s Time Trial. It’s a race in two, the Italian Filippo Ganna is closer than it looked a few minutes ago. They’re both going for it – here we go. “That was a stunning final third of the race by Ganna!” says the TV caller. Over to you Remco Evenepoel – he cannot cruise this now. He’s led all race… to the business end!!

Cycling, Men’s Time Trial. Lucas Plapp (AUS) is out of the race but I’m unclear why – there’s been nothing on television as yet. He was in the hunt for a medal, too. Remco Evenepoel looks to be putting a gap in them – just needs to stay on the bike.

Judy, Women’s 48kg. Does every bout end up in extra time? On the evidence of what I’ve seen this afternoon, it feels this way. Back to the pocket-rocket teenager Tara Babulfath from Sweden up against Kazakh Abiba Abuzhakynova, who claimed bronze at the world championships earlier this year. It’s all over! Babulfath has laid a complex hold on the floor and makes Abuzhakynova throw in the towel – lovely, if slightly brutal, stuff from the 18-year-old. She’s the winner of an Olympic medal!

“To ‘medal’ is clearly wrong,” writes Bob Hughes “but I’m getting used to it. On my train yesterday, however, the guard said the rear carriages had ‘not platformed’”

Yikes. Where does this end?

Andrew Benton has a view too: “This is a bit (ok, a lot) off-topic, but your ‘medal’ point has set me off…why-oh-why-oh-why is everything these days about ‘impact’ in writing on the web? What’s wrong with ‘effect’ and ‘affect’? And ‘upcoming’ too, there is a perfectly good word that has been around for ages that we should be using much more, and it’s called ‘forthcoming’ (as used in the Guardian). Many, many times ‘upcoming’ is redundant in a sentence online, such as an ‘upcoming event in August’ – you don’t need upcoming as August is clearly in the future! Seethe, seethe…. Nice that English is so responsive and dynamic though.”

I best leave this topic be, I don’t want to raise anyone’s blood pressure!

Cycling, Men’s Time Trial. It’s going according to plan for top-ranked Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who reached the 13.1km checkpoint (the course is 32.2km) some 7.4 seconds quicker than anyone else. We’ll get his 22km split shortly; there are nine of the 34 riders still on the course. Australian Lucas Plapp remains in the medal hunt.

What a celebration. Boukli is in tears, her support crew are too. “You win the bronze medal in judo,” says the TV commentator. “You don’t get it as a consolation prize.”

There’s another bronze medal match to come – they award two in this event, one via the repechage process and then another for the losing semi-finalists.

France’s Shirine Boukli celebrates with her team after defeating Spain’s Laura Martinez Abelenda during their women’s judo -48 kg bronze final. Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/APShare

Updated at 17.57 CEST

France wins their first medal!

Judo, Women’s 48kg: into the bronze medal match, with French fighter Shirine Boukli there via the repechage and taking it to extra time against Laura Martinez from Spain. The crowd are up and about – are they about to see France’s first medal of their home games? 90 seconds into golden point time, they re-set. Oh, a big hold… can she pin her for ten seconds to get the point and the win? So close! The TV refs are taking a look to see if the Spanish athlete has gotten out of the hold incorrectly…. she has! It’s a medal for the French! Shirine Boukli, bronze medalist.

France’s Shirine Boukli pins Laura Martinez Abelenda of Spain to the mat in the women’s -48kg bronze medal match. Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersShare

Updated at 17.55 CEST

Actually, one more yarn before we get to the sport. A beauty, too – via Reuters.

High jumper Gianmarco Tamberi issued a profuse apology to his wife on Saturday after his wedding ring slipped off his finger while he was serving as Italy’s flag bearer on a boat in the Seine River during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. “Too much water, too many kilos lost in the last few months or maybe the irrepressible enthusiasm of what we were doing,” Tamberi, who won gold at the Tokyo Games, wrote on Instagram in a post directed at his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi.

“Probably all three things, the fact remains that I felt it (my ring) slip away, I saw it fly…. I followed it with my gaze until I saw it bounce inside the boat.”

Tamberi said that his wedding ring then bounced into the waters of the Seine in what he described as “a few moments that lasted forever.”

“But if it really had to happen, if I really had to lose it, I couldn’t imagine a better place,” Tamberi added. “It will remain forever in the riverbed of the City of Love.”

Tamberi said the mishap would be an excuse to renew vows and get married again, and perhaps serve as an impetus to earn more Olympic hardware.

“May it be a good omen to return home with an even bigger gold!” he wrote. (Reuters)

Around the grounds, shall we? To begin, in men’s football Egypt leads 1-0 in the 29th minute. Oh, scratch that – there’s an equaliser! Or is there? No… offside! As you were, my friends. “The offside is clear,” says the commentator.

In that same comp, Argentina got their must-win victory over Iraq, saluting 3-1. Spain defeated Dominican Republic by the same margin. Ukraine lead Morocco 1-0.

In women’s water polo action, Team USA knocked off Greece 15-6. How about men’s handball? Norway over the line 36-31 in a high-scoring affair against Argentina.

More men’s team sport with basketball (I assume this’ll be balanced by plenty of women’s matches on Sunday), where Brazil lead the hosts France 19-10.

That’ll do for now. Back to where the medals are being won in judo and road racing.

A nice little nugget on the women’s 48kg judo final – up soon. From Mark O’Connor: “No Mongolian woman has ever won Olympic gold, they have only ever won two total, both in Beijing. History beckons.”

Their competitor, Bavuudorjiin Baasankhüü, is the current world champion. She’ll be the crowd favourite after the controversy in the other semi, where the Swedish teenager was eliminated by the video ref and had a good old meltdown.

Richard Smith has an answer for Gary Naylor. “Can I suggest that French guy DuPont? Am a keen watcher of 7s and have never seen him before this year. Am guessing his dad’s one of the coaches.” Now we’re talking.

Russell Yong has a related good’un, too. “An interesting story from the last Games: Nathan Crumpton, who had previously represented the United States in the skeleton in the 2018 Winter Olympics, switched his affiliation to American Samoa and represented them in 100m sprint in 2021, having never run a competitive sprint or even had athletics experience beyond some jumping in his university days. World Athletics gives out universality slots to countries considered under-represented nations, which was how Crumpton qualified; given that, if you delved enough you’d probably find someone in a similar position.”

So what you’re saying is I need to dust off my running spikes and get citizenship from a tiny Micronesian island state before 2028? If that’s what it takes.

Judo, Men 60kg. A local in the gold medal bout! It’s Luka Mkheide, the bronze medal winner from Tokyo, is the first through to the final giving the French hosts a chance to secure a gold medal on afternoon one. And straight into the second semi final, Kazakhstan’s Yeldos Smetov is grappling with Spaniad Francisco Garrigos. The former has a couple of Olympic medals, the latter won the world champs last year.

Into golden score – make that deep into golden score, nearly four minutes now – the Spanish combatant is pinged for negative judo and that’s enough to see him off! It’ll be France v Kazakhstan for gold. A time-honoured rivalry? Probably not. But what it would mean for both nations to collect a gold medal before stumps on day one.

Kazakhstan’s Yeldos Smetov celebrates after defeating Spain’s Francisco Garrigos. Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/APShare

Updated at 17.33 CEST

Cycling, Men’s Time Trial. Five riders have progressed behind the 22km time check, leaving 10km to the finish line. Italian Alberto Bettiol has the lead for now on that measure, for what little it’s worth. On the other side of the card, ten riders are still to jump, and will do so across the next 14 minutes or so. For British readers, that includes Josh Tarling who will depart fifth last – the Welsh 20-year-old won this event at the Junior World Championships in Australia a couple of years ago. Speaking of the Aussies, who won the women’s event through the brilliant Grace Brown (she won it by a mile, too!), watch for Lucas Plapp – setting off now.

Are we conceding defeat on medal being used as a verb? Is it too late to turn back the tide? Big Haydos on the cycling comms just said it three times in one minute.

A significant moment for Team GB in the pool earlier today.

Eva Okaro broke new ground in Paris on Saturday as she became the first black woman to represent Team GB in the pool at the Olympics, aged just 17.

Okaro swam the women’s 4x100m freestyle second leg, in a head-to-head against the USA’s two-time Olympic champion Simone Manuel, and helped Britain into second in their heat, qualifying for the final in seventh place.

In competing at la Defense Arena, Okaro joined Alice Dearing, the first black woman to swim for Team GB in the open water race in the Tokyo Games three years ago, as a pioneer for her sport.
“I don’t really get distracted by things like that,” she told the PA news agency. “That’s one of my strengths, just being in the moment every time.

“But thinking about that now is exciting. Being the person a lot of young kids kind of look up to and I just like to keep trying to be that role model and try as hard as I can.

Eva Okaro (top right) with teammates Anna Hopkin, Lucy Hope and Freya Anderson. Photograph: Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesShare

Updated at 17.15 CEST

Cycling, Men’s Time Trial: Righto, 34 competitors in this final with Belgian Remco Evenepoel the man to beat, scheduled to depart last. To be honest, I’m finding it hard to concentrate as yet because the expert commentator on the world feed sounds like Matthew Hayden and that’s sent me down a wormhole. More soon.

Some anger over one of the bits from last night. Per Reuters…

A parody of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous fresco ‘The Last Supper’ featuring drag queens in the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris has sparked fury among the Catholic church and far-right politicians, while supporters praised its message of tolerance.

The unprecedented ceremony on the Seine River, which drew millions of viewers around the world, included a tableau celebrating the French capital’s vibrant nightlife and reputation as a place of tolerance, pleasure and subversiveness.

It recreated the famous biblical scene of Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles sharing a last meal before crucifixion, but with a group of drag queens, a transgender model and a naked singer made up as the Greek god of wine Dionysus.

The Catholic church in France criticised the segment.

“This ceremony has unfortunately included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity, which we very deeply deplore,” the Conference of French bishops said in a statement.

Far-right politicians in France and elsewhere took to social media to express their disgust.

“To all the Christians of the world who are watching the #Paris2024 ceremony and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Last Supper, know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation,” far-right politician Marion Marechal said in a post on X.

Her Italian counterpart, Matteo Salvini, added: “Opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians in the world was really a very bad start, dear French. Sleazy.”

American billionaire Elon Musk, who cemented his shift towards right-wing politics by endorsing Donald Trump earlier this month, said it was “extremely disrespectful to Christians”.

France, while proud of its rich Catholic heritage, also has a long tradition of secularism and anti-clericalism. Blasphemy is not only legal, but also considered by many as an essential pillar of freedom of speech in a democratic society.

“In France, people are free to love how they please, are free to love whoever they want, are free to believe or not believe,” Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director, told reporters on Saturday when asked about critics.

Some commentators said the controversy was just another example of 21st century culture wars turbocharged by a 24-hour news cycle and social media.

“Everyone has to take offence it seems,” David Aaronovitch, a BBC Radio 4 presenter said on X. “Leonardo is one of the most famous images in the Western world and has been pastiched, parodied and altered tens of thousands of times.”

One of the pastiche’s protagonists was unapologetic, however.

“It wouldn’t be fun if there were no controversy. Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone agreed on this planet?” Philippe Katerine, the blue naked man in the scene, told BFM TV a day after the show. (Reporting by Michel Rose and Julien Pretot in Paris and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

While we wait for the men’s 60kg, get this into you: the first of our daily photo galleries. These will be a joy throughout the fortnight, worth returning to often.

Judo, Women’s 48kg. We’re going upstairs to find out if Babulfath has been rubbed out for holding Tsunoda’s straight arm in an unfair way? No! The call goes her way! They continue. We’re 120 seconds into this with arm locks the main attacking move. Make that 165 seconds. “Absolutely engrossing,” says the commentator. Oh no! The Swedish teenager has been rubbed out. A bit blow-up follows. She did something called “snapping back,” getting her into strife. There’s a risk she’ll be kicked out of the bronze medal bout as well according to the TV expert. “You cannot do that. I cannot remember the last time I’ve seen that face-to-face with a referee.”

Well, it matters not: the 31-year-old from Japan, Natsumi Tsunoda, is advancing to the gold medal bout, where she’ll take on Bavuudorjiin Baasankhüü (Mongolia).

Judo, Women’s 48kg. It’s nil-all with a minute to go. The Swede is just 18 and to the untrained/naked eye looks the more likely to snag a point here. The gong has sounded – we’re into extra time now, which means golden score. Drama!

Judo, Women’s 48kg. I missed the start but let me tell you that an athlete with a sensational name from Mongolia, Bavuudorjiin Baasankhüü, will be grapping for gold! She blitzed Paraguay’s Gabriela Narvaez 10-zip in the first semi. We’ll learn more about her in just a moment though because the second semi is about to begin, between Sweden’s Tara Babulfath and Japan’s Natsumi Tsunoda. Fight!

Natsumi Tsunoda of Japan in action against Tara Babulfath of Sweden. Photograph: Daniel Irungu/EPAShare

Updated at 17.35 CEST

Matt Ebden was smashed by Novak Djokovic earlier, but at least he retained his sense of humour about it all. He’ll be a much stronger show in the doubles.

“Hi Adam.” Good afternoon to you, Gary Naylor. “Can the live blog hive mind help here? I’d love to know the Olympian at these Games who has done the least to earn their spot. I’m sure less than the benchmark 10,000 hours will have been put in by some competitors (though many, many more by most of course), but did anyone start a sport this year and find themselves on a barge last night?”

A great question, one that I ponder myself every four years. No solution as yet. But who has come from the clouds to be here at Paris 2024 – does anyone know?

Fiji join France in the Men’s Rugby Sevens Final

Men’s Rugby Sevens: At the semi-final stage here and the defending champs Fiji are on storming into another gold medal match! Sticking another three on the board with 40 seconds to go, they have an insurmountable 24-7 lead. What a terrific result. They will take on France for the biggest prize of all, who beat South Africa 19-5.

A flying Jordan Sepho scores a try for France during their Rugby Sevens semi-final victory over South Africa. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Observer

Another try for Fiji! “A stunning second half,” says the TV caller – the scores were level at 7-7 at break and piled on 24 unanswered points thereafter.

The final is a touch over three hours away, straight after the bronze medal match.

Updated at 16.53 CEST

Phew. What’s next? Three gold medals so far today – China 2, Austalia 1. Three more this afternoon before a busy night: the men’s time trial and a couple over in the judo. I’ll plug into both after a lap around the grounds, so to speak.

GOLD for Australia’s Grace Brown! GB’s Henderson takes silver

Anna Henderson gets the silver for Team GB ahead of Chloe Dygert (USA) into bronze, by one second, who lost time in the scrap. A wonderful, joyous response from the veteran Brown – what a way to cap her career, an Olympic champion!

Grace Brown of Australia is cheered on as she powers along the streets of Paris. Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersGreat Britain’s Anna Henderson zips past the National Assembly. Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty ImagesTeam GB’s Anna Henderson (left) took silver in the women’s time trial, behind Australia’s Grace Brown. Photograph: Paul Childs/ReutersShare

Updated at 17.01 CEST

Cycling, Women’s Time Trial: Nobody can catch Grace Brown! She’s going to be the Olympic champion! Dygert (USA) is competing for silver from here with 1km to go.

Cycling, Women’s Time Trial: Brown crosses the line 90 seconds faster than Anna Henderson of Team GB! One rider to go, it’s the world champ Dygert. Scenes!

Kathy Watt won Australia’s first gold on day one at Barcelona 32 years ago. Can Grace Brown, another road racer from rural Victoria, do the same here in Paris? Would be a huge moment for the veteran, retiring after this season. Go on!

Cycling, Women’s Time Trial: Just 10 riders to left to finish! Team GB’s Anna Henderson was through the time check quickest until Grace Brown overtook her just now. All eyes on the favourite Chloe Dygert (USA)… and she’s five seconds behind Brown! The Australian is in the gold medal position with 10 km to go!

The Aussie men got the points earlier against Spain in the hoops, much to the satisfaction of Mark O’Connor. “French colour commentator with the ‘awwww Pa-TEEEE’ before this even hits is your XXXIII Olympiad moment until further notice.”

Cycling, Women’s Time Trial: 21 finisher, 14 to go. Up top for new, New Zealand’s Kim Cadzow who has a 5.65 second advantage over Audrey Cordon Ragot.

But the major story is whether all the big chances can stay on their bikes. Belgian Lotte Kopecky has taken a huge tumble losing her back wheel! She was the fastest yet to the 22km split – that’s a huge moment. She’s back on right away, made of tough stuff, but it’s going to require something special from her to get back.

Men’s Volleyball: Italy have finished the job against Brazil, knocking off the former giant 25-23, 27-25, 18-25, 25-21. In Men’s Basketball, Germany have easily accounted for Japan 97-77. Over at the Men’s Handball, it’s Holland 10-8 winners over Hungary. To the beach (shocker of a day for it) for Men’s Beach Volleyball, Sweden’s pair have knocked off the Australians in straight sets – how does that happen, exactly?! More team sports coming your way through the course of the afternoon.

Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2024/jul/27/paris-2024-olympics-day-one-swimming-cycling-rowing-hockey-and-more-live

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Publish date : 2024-07-27 15:16:16

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