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Men’s golf: they have begun teeing off at Le Golf National on the third day. I’m sure there is some kind of more exciting team format they could use for the golf at the Olympics rather than this, but there you go. The lead at the moment is a three-way tie on 11 under featuring Xander Schauffele (USA), Hideki Matsuyama (Jap) and Tommy Fleetwood (GBr). Those three tee off at 12.39pm local time, as there are still 60 men to trundle round the course.
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Good morning, it is Martin Belam here in London, just a hop, skip and a jump from Paris. If you are joining us, here is what we have coming up on the medal front today …
Medal Events
🥇 Shooting – women’s 25m pistol (from 09.30)
🥇 Rowing – men’s & women’s single sculls / men’s & women’s eights (from 09.30)
🥇 Equestrian – dressage team grand prix special (from 10.00)
🥇 Cycling – men’s road race (from 11.00)
🥇 Tennis – men’s doubles / women’s singles (from 12.00)
🥇 Sailing – women’s & men’s windsurfing (from 12.13)
🥇 Table Tennis – women’s singles (from 14.30)
🥇 Archery – women’s individual (from 14.46)
🥇 Gymnastics – men’s floor & pommel horse / women’s vault (from 15.30)
🥇 Shooting – men’s skeet (from 15.30)
🥇 Judo – mixed team (from 16.00)
🥇 Badminton – women’s doubles (from 16.10)
🥇 Athletics – men’s shot put & decathlon / women’s triple jump & 100m / 4 x 400m mixed relay (from 16.10)
🥇 Fencing – women’s sabre team (from 20.00)
🥇 Swimming – men’s 100m butterfly / women’s 200m IM & 800m freestyle / 4 x 100m medley mixed relay (from 20.30)
🥇 Surfing – men’s & women’s (from 22.00)
*(All times listed are Paris local)
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Jonathan Howcroft
That’s all from me this weekend in Melbourne. Time for me to pass you onto Martin Belam in London.
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Badminton: The first women’s quarter-final is being played to an extremely high standard with fifth seed Yamaguchi (JPN) taking the opening game against top-ranked An (KOR).
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Weather: It is overcast in Paris this morning and temperatures are a few degrees cooler than recent days. It should remain dry but there’s the chance of a shower later this evening.
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One of the questions of the week in our household has been “what is in the cardboard box handed to medallists on the podium?”. Well, the answer is a copy of the offical Paris 2024 poster, as unboxed here by Brazilian judoka Beatriz Rodrigues de Souza.
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Badminton: As well as judo this Saturday morning we now have badminton, specifically the women’s singles quarter-finals. Seven of the top eight seeds have made it through, including defending champion Chen Yufei (CHN) and the current world champion An Se-young (KOR).
An Se-young is first up in the Porte de La Chapelle Arena, taking on Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi – the 2021 and 2022 world champion.
South Korea’s An Se-young is in quarter-final action this morning. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Judo: There are just two round of 32 contests remaining, with the line-up for the last 16 almost complete. Israel are currently leading Mongolia for the right to face France, and once that has concluded Georgia await the winner of Italy v Hungary.
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Judo: Spain have already won their contest against the Refugee Olympic Team. They move on to face world champions Japan.
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Judo: The first action of the day is under way with a couple of contests in the mixed team elimination round of 32. France, led by Teddy Riner, are expected to compete for a medal. Japan are the defending world champions.
Nikoloz Sherazadishvili of Spain in action against Adnan Khankan of Refugee Olympic Team in the Judo – Mixed Team Elimination Round of 32.
Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersShare
The sport that I have become an armchair expert in fastest this Olympics is Trampoline Gymnastics. I will be using “horizontal displacement” in all conversations for the next week.
The women’s gold medal in the sport was won yesterday by Team GB’s Bryony Page, who sounds excellent. Before trampolining she studied biology, writing a dissertation on the sounds that dinosaurs might have made. Her plan now is to join the cast of Cirque du Soleil.
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As we approach the halfway mark of official competition, Barney Ronay has taken the pulse of the Games from ground level.
One week in, the Games have so far been grand, exhilarating, and unusually light and sustainable in their staging. But the big moments have mainly been Francophone, from delight at the men’s rugby sevens victory – France’s players are still engaged in an unceasing celebration; a selection of them were seen most recently dancing in sunglasses in Ibiza – to an opening ceremony that was basically a slick and persuasive TV advert for Paris, to the wonderful spectacle of the triathlon that felt at times like a mashup of ominous pollution bulletins and a super-shiny chocolate box Netflix series, E coli in Paris.
For these Games to be great they need to do more than speak to the pre-converted or pump up the tyres of its host nation. The legend of the Games is built on moments of competition, the sense that what we have here is a kind of sporting ultimacy. The middle-aged NBC subscriber base may already have that shared folk memory, but not so much the younger audience. A pre-Games survey by the company EduBirdie suggested almost 90% of the UK’s generation Z demographic had never watched a single minute of the Olympics and that one in three wouldn’t notice if the Games were cancelled.
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The preliminary round of the women’s 100m was a glimpse into a parallel Olympics.
There are no medals at stake in this parallel Olympics. None of the 36 runners on show make it past the opening session. In fact, the very point of the preliminary round is as a kind of quality filter, safely herding away the least accomplished runners before they can bother the Richardsons and the Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryces of this world. In a way, these are the slowest fastest women on Earth. But they are all Olympians. And all of them have a story to tell.
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The final of the men’s singles could add a full stop to any debate about the greatest tennis player in history. It could also confirm the changing of generations and the arrival of the next contender for the mantle.
While Djokovic has won every other big title on offer, including the four grand slam tournaments, every current Masters 1000 event, the ATP Finals and Davis Cup, Olympic gold is the one achievement he has yet to secure. The semi-finals have proven an extremely difficult barrier in his career, with the Serb losing at this stage in three of his four previous Olympic appearances. Coming into the match, Djokovic held a 1-7 record in Olympic semi-finals and bronze medal matches combined across singles and mixed doubles. He won a singles bronze medal at Beijing 2008.
Earlier in the day, Carlos Alcaraz continued his incredible summer form as he demolished Félix Auger-Aliassime 6-1, 6-1 to reach the gold medal match in his first Olympics. Alcaraz, the second seed and still only 21, is the youngest men’s medallist since tennis was brought back into the Olympic Games in 1988.
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Just a quick note that there is a gap in moderation coverage meaning we have had to close the comments section for the time being. We’ll hopefully be back up to speed in a couple of hours.
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One of the most popular gold medals of Australia’s Olympics was secured by BMX racer Saya Sakakibara. The 24-year-old travelled to Tokyo three years ago expecting a medal but crashed heavily in the semi-finals. That fall came not long after her brother suffered a life-altering crash in a race in Australia.
The setbacks for Saya Sakakibara just didn’t let up. The trauma from her brother’s BMX accident, gnawing at her in the months before Tokyo. The impact of her own crash at those Games, ruining dreams and leaving her in hospital. Another stack, a year later, that triggered lingering concussion symptoms.
It was all getting too much, and she was close to giving up. Close, but she persevered. Built the foundation again. Started tearing in. Gaining confidence. Putting the fears aside. And then – three days out from competition in Paris – a test for Covid came back positive.
“My heart kind of sank. I was like, ‘oh no’, like, I can’t believe that. This is my Olympics,” she said.
In the end, she was right. Paris has become the 24-year-old’s Games, after she claimed gold in the women’s BMX racing event at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines stadium on a raucous Friday evening.
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The opening day of action on the track has athletics fans salivating at the prospect of these Games witnessing a host of broken records. One world record has already fallen – the mixed 4 x 400m relay – while Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei won the men’s 10,000m title in an Olympic record. There were also a stack of sub-11 second runs in round one of the women’s 100m.
Watching on was Jon Ridgeon, the World Athletics chief executive, who predicted that more records would tumble in the next eight days. “The track is fast, really fast,” he said. “And the athletes are also coming here in sublime form. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw four or five world records.”
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France’s male footballers are following suit and yesterday Thierry Henry’s side reached the semi-finals at Argentina’s expense in a bitter grudge match that spilled into violence at full-time.
The song sung by several of Argentina’s Copa América-winning side last month, singling out France’s players of African heritage, sparked an international incident and justifiable hurt throughout a country whose diversity is a superpower. Its footballers knew the importance of defending their homeland, its predominant values and, not least, themselves.
Afterwards Millot, who will be suspended for the semi-final against Egypt, said the game’s grim context had “given us a pep”. France certainly began like a train and so did their support, who whistled through Argentina’s national anthem and booed when the visitors’ names were recited.
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The ability of France’s pre-tournament stars to rise to the big occasion has been staggering. Marchand, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Cassandre Beaugrand, Antoine Dupont, and now Teddy Riner have all secured gold medals to ensure the opening week of the Paris Games has been accompanied by the sound of the greatest national anthem in the world.
He is France’s most popular sports star, a smiling powerhouse known as the nation’s teddy bear, who for years aced judo contests to crowds’ shouts of “Teddy Bam Bam!” in honour of his ability to swiftly throw and pin his opponents to the ground.
All hopes were fulfilled when Teddy Riner displayed his ice-cold tactical calm and spectacular physical might in his home city of Paris on Friday – making history by taking his third Olympic individual gold medal in the +100kg category.
The 35-year-old is now considered the most successful judo star of all time – with four Olympic golds – three individual and one team – and two Olympic bronze medals.
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Also in the pool Kaylee McKeown made Australian history.
Four individual gold medals in three years across two Olympics makes her the most individually successful Australian Olympian of all-time. Dolphins teammate Emma McKeon has six golds, four from relays. Ian Thorpe and Mollie O’Callaghan both have five golds, but again relays have played their part. Friday’s triumph gave McKeown her fifth gold medal – now she has four individual victories and a medley relay win in Tokyo.
Before Friday, only eight Australian Olympians had three individual gold medals to their name – an illustrious list that included Thorpe, Ariarne Titmus, Paris flag-bearer Jess Fox and past greats Dawn Fraser and Betty Cuthbert. McKeown has now overtaken that list to sit alone on four individual gold medals. Those seven other names were already rarefied company. From Friday, McKeown is in a league of her own.
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Those brilliant sporting accomplishments begin in the pool where, last night, Léon Marchand’s fourth gold medal cemented his status as a French Olympic legend. His performances have illuminated the opening week of competition and energised home fans to such an extent that La Défense Arena will be remembered as one of the greatest swimming arenas in the sport’s history.
It was Marchand’s 11th race in six days, his fourth gold, and his fourth record. Great Britain’s Duncan Scott was closest to him, but truth be told that wasn’t very close at all. Scott won the silver in 1min 55.31sec. It was his eighth Olympic medal. Only Jason Kenny has won more for Great Britain.
Scott was pretty phlegmatic, too. It was his second-fastest time. But Marchand was just that much faster. “I’d like to think I went head to head with Leon for a little bit of the race,” he said, “but the guy is the best 200m breaststroker in the world, the best 200 fly swimmer in the world, the best 200 medley swimmer in the world, and the best 400 medley swimmer in the world. It’s a real honour to be able to race him in this environment as well. The crowd were nuts. It was sensational to be a part of.”
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Updated at 06.52 CEST
We’ll come onto the brilliant sporting accomplishments of day seven shortly, but the leading news item of the day was the row regarding participation in women’s boxing.
Here’s the latest news story on the subject.
Here’s Barney Ronay’s analysis from North Paris Arena.
And here’s a podcast featuring Ross Tucker, the sports scientist I turn to when issues like this arise to help synthesise the complex science involved.
Podcast SPECIAL. If you’ve just watched the women’s boxing disgrace at #Paris2024, and are wondering “how did we get here?”, this podcast is for you. We explore and explain the IOC’s disregard for safety and fairness for women in sport. Appalling misogyny https://t.co/FG9fX9p7ik
— Ross Tucker (@Scienceofsport) August 1, 2024
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The best images of day seven include our first glimpses of the Paris running track. What do you make of the lilac hue?
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Judo will provide the first action of the day with the mixed team event kicking off at 08:00. Next up is badminton with the women’s singles quarter-finals taking place from 08:30.
At 09:00 there’s an avalanche of activity with beach volleyball, golf, handball, shooting and volleyball.
Athletics events begin at 10:00. The morning program includes the first round of the men’s 100m, and probably a single jump from Armand Duplantis in pole vault qualification.
Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis is the track and field athlete of his generation. Photograph: Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesShare
Staying with the medal table, Nielsen’s Gracenote has updated its prediction for who will come out on top by the end of the Games.
Before the Olympics the USA were expected to claim the most medals but face a stiff test from China for the most golds. Behind those titans, Great Britain, France, and Australia rounded out the top five.
🧮 – How are the top #Olympics nations tracking against our #VirtualMedalTable forecast after 7 days (113 events)?
🇫🇷France, 🇺🇸USA, 🇰🇷Korea, 🇨🇦Canada up on medals
🇦🇺Australia, 🇯🇵Japan, 🇮🇹Italy, 🇳🇱Netherlands below medal expectations
🇫🇷France behind gold forecast,🇯🇵Japan ahead pic.twitter.com/sphIxKw12L
— Gracenote Olympic (@GracenoteGold) August 2, 2024Share
China still top the medal table thanks to their dominance in shooting and diving, but France and Australia have again climbed above the USA after impressing on day seven. It is turning into a Games to remember for the Dolphins who lead the US swim team 7-4 in gold medals.
53 NOCs have now won medals at these Olympics, with 34 nations hearing their national anthem. That includes Uganda after Joshua Cheptegei became his country’s first multiple gold medallist when he added 10,000m gold yesterday to his 5,000m success in Tokyo.
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Preamble – Day Eight Schedule
Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of the eighth official day of competition of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
Day six was another stunning day for the hosts with French superstars Teddy Riner and Leon Marchand continuing the incredible atmosphere around these Games. Australia enjoyed another gold rush with Kaylee McKeown becoming the first Australian to win four individual golds. And there were exciting signs from the opening day of athletics action with the Stade de France track praised for its speed. But despite all this extraordinary action it was a day overshadowed by “the most wildly politicised, toxic and largely misunderstood event of these Olympics.”
So what can we look forward to today?
Medal Events
🥇 Shooting – women’s 25m pistol (from 09:30)
🥇 Rowing – men’s & women’s single sculls / men’s & women’s eights (from 09:30)
🥇 Equestrian – dressage team grand prix special (from 10:00)
🥇 Cycling – men’s road race (from 11:00)
🥇 Tennis – men’s doubles / women’s singles (from 12:00)
🥇 Sailing – women’s & men’s windsurfing (from 12:13)
🥇 Table Tennis – women’s singles (from 14:30)
🥇 Archery – women’s individual (from 14:46)
🥇 Gymnastics – men’s floor & pommel horse / women’s vault (from 15:30)
🥇 Shooting – men’s skeet (from 15:30)
🥇 Judo – mixed team (from 16:00)
🥇 Badminton – women’s doubles (from 16:10)
🥇 Athletics – men’s shot put & decathlon / women’s triple jump & 100m / 4 x 400m mixed relay (from 16:10)
🥇 Fencing – women’s sabre team (from 20:00)
🥇 Swimming – men’s 100m butterfly / women’s 200m IM & 800m freestyle / 4 x 100m medley mixed relay (from 20:30)
🥇 Surfing – men’s & women’s (from 22:00)
*(All times listed are Paris local)
Simon Burnton’s day-by-day guide:
Gymnastics: men’s pommel final
In his last ever event Max Whitlock is attempting to become the first gymnast ever to win four Olympic medals on the same apparatus. Since he won gold in Tokyo Whitlock has retired, unretired (“I felt like a complete waste of space”), and had a generally positive return, with occasional hiccups and a few minor injuries. “There are still areas I can improve but I’m definitely on the right track,” he said in March of his preparations. Also being decided today: the men’s floor and women’s vault.
Athletics: women’s 100m final
The second night of athletics at the Stade de France and things are hotting up, with five titles to be decided including the women’s 100m, in which the USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson will aim to stop Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. For Fraser-Price this will be a final meet, 16 years after she won gold in Beijing. “I want to finish on my own terms,” she says.
Swimming: women’s 800m freestyle
At a meet in Orlando in February Canada’s 17-year-old tyro Summer McIntosh beat Katie Ledecky in the 800m freestyle, the American’s first defeat over the distance in any kind of final for 13 years. But McIntosh, who trains at the University of Florida alongside Ledecky, has decided to concentrate on other events in Paris leaving Ledecky strong favourite to cement her all-time-great status with a fourth successive Olympic gold over the distance.
Other unmissable moments include… well, practically everything. We’re into the closing sessions for sports that have dominated the opening week, and into the thick of things in the Stade de France, so everywhere you look there’s going to be a reason to stay tuned. If pressed, I would suggest you shouldn’t turn down one final glimpse of the surf of Teahupo’o. The men’s road race (cycling) promises to be brutal. And the crowning of the decathlon gold medallist is akin to crowning the king of the Games.
I’m sure I’ve failed to include something notable to you in this short rundown, so feel free to let me know what’s on your agenda by emailing: [email protected] or, if you’re still rummaging around in the post-Twitter dumpster fire, find me on X @jphowcroft.
I’ll be around for the first few hours of the blog here in Australia, after which I’m handing over to Martin Belam in the UK.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2024/aug/03/paris-2024-olympics-day-eight-athletics-rowing-mens-cycling-road-race-and-more-live
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Publish date : 2024-08-03 06:05:58
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