Thank you for joining me this morning. It’s been fun to have some early action to cover for a change. It’s now over to Luke McLaughlin for the culmination of the Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay and the avalanche of other sport that’s about to descend from Mt Olympus.
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Boxer, dancer, singer. I think Kellie Harrington is what the entertainment industry would call a triple threat.
After the cheering stopped. Kellie Harrington, double Olympic champion pic.twitter.com/mXjIt4IR6V
— Chris (@chrisdotlatchem) August 6, 2024
MRWMR: There is now a gap of 36 seconds between the leading eight (ECU, PER, ITA, ESP, MEX, CHN, BRA, and AUS) and the rest, towards the end of the second of four legs. This marathon is going to be a two-legged 20km sprint.
We’re a few minutes away from the start of taekwondo action for the day, beginning with the men’s flyweight (58kg) and women’s flyweight (49kg).
At the same time the opening tee shot will be struck in the women’s golf at Le Golf National. Defending champion Nelly Korda (USA) has been the star of the 2024 season so far, and she tees off at 09:55 local time.
Yes – they are walking laps. I can’t locate exactly how long the laps are, but I reckon approximately 3km. These loops start and finish at the Eiffel Tower, so the views are spectacular.
The course – It’s the same as the one used for the individual 20km race walks.
The action – we’re about halfway through the second leg (the first female leg) and there’s a leading bunch now of eight teams (ECU, PER, ITA, ESP, MEX, CHN, BRA, AUS) with Australia’s Jemima Montag working hard to join the front runners walkers. The gap to the chasing pack is almost 20 seconds.
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The US Women’s National Team haven’t won Olympic gold since 2012, which represents an unprecedented drought, but new coach Emma Hayes is leading a revival with her side now clear favourites for a fifth title.
A year to the day since one of their lowest ebbs, the loss on penalties to Sweden in the first knockout stage of the 2023 World Cup, a hard-fought and sometimes hard to watch 1-0 extra-time victory over Germany sent the US into Saturday’s final against Brazil, ensuring the Americans at least a silver medal.
The team is yet to recapture the imperious brilliance that was the hallmark of American sides of yesteryear; perhaps it never will, given the dramatic improvement of other nations. But in reaching the Olympic final the US are back on a familiar stage after the uncertainty and insecurity of the past couple of years under the previous head coach, Vlatko Andonovski, as a group of exceptional veterans endured a slow fade.
MRWMR: After 43 or so minutes of walking, it’s over to the second leg of the race. There is no baton to pass, with the rule in place being the two members of each team must touch at the changeover.
There’s a leading five of Germany, Spain, Brazil, Ecuador, and Japan. Canada and Italy are not far off the pace. Australia in ninth have around 20 seconds to make up, which already feels significant even at this early stage.
There’s not a better date on the basketball calendar than the Olympic men’s quarter-finals, according to Bryan Armen Graham.
Thirty-two years on from Barcelona, basketball has taken its place alongside hip-hop and jazz as America’s richest cultural exports. With all those kids long since grown and the international talent pool deeper than ever, the last eight of the Olympic knockout stage has become the best day basketball can offer: an all-day quadruple-header of win-or-go-home quarter-finals that winnows eight of the best teams on the planet down to four. The winners move within touching distance of a medal, the losers hit the bricks and the whole thing crackles with an energy that only national pride can engender.
MRWMR: Dunfee (CAN) and Kawano (JPN) have been reeled in by the chasing pack. There is now a leading group of eight walkers, with a further five still in touch.
However, it remains to be seen if this matters greatly as the strategy of this race unfolds. There have been so few Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay races nobody is quite sure what the best approach is. Go hard, and treat it like two 20km dashes, expecting to recover sufficiently during the women’s leg? Or conserve energy and make up lost ground towards the end of the race as early bolters tire?
I’ll keep you updated with the walking but continue to stud this blog with other stories from around the Games. Like this one from Bryan Armen Graham on Bob Bowman, swimming’s supercoach, whose golden touch extends from Michael Phelps to Leon Marchand
Four years ago, Bowman, soon after taking the coaching job at Arizona State University, received an email from a French teenager hoping to attend college and train in the United States.
Dear sir, I am a French swimmer, my name is Léon Marchand (18 years old). I would like to join the university of Arizona State in summer 2021 for swim and compete in NCAA with your amazing team. Do you think I could benefit from a scholarship? What level of education is required? (TOEFL, SAT …) You will find attached my presentation sheet. Thank you for the time granted to my request.
Sportingly, Léon
All of which has been enhanced by the Stade de France, which is proving a magnificent Olympic stadium, and the French crowds, that have packed out every session and contributed greatly to the atmosphere.
Credit also due to Mondo Worldwide, the track manufacturer, for laying a surface that is encouraging such fast times.
MRWMR: Canada’s Evan Dunfee made a fast start to the Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay. The bronze medallist in the 50km race walk at Tokyo struck out on his own, but he has now been joined by Japan’s Masatora Kawano, with the bulk of the field five or six seconds further back. We’re about a quarter of the way through this opening leg.
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MRWMR: The coup de bâton has been performed just a few metres from the Eiffel Tower. The very first leg in the history of the Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay is away!
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MRWMR: There are 25 pairs competing along the historic course through the centre of Paris. At the 2024 World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships Italy took gold from Japan and Spain. The Spanish pair of Alvaro Martin (20km walk bronze medallist) and Maria Perez (20km walk silver) are heavily fancied to secure gold this morning.
It’s nearly time for the first starter’s pistol of the day with the marathon race walk mixed relay almost upon us. This is the first time the 42.195km race has been staged at the Olympics, after it was introduced to replace the 50km race walk, which was deemed too long (men’s winners came in at around 3h 30, women’s around 4h).
The relay involves two athletes, one man and one woman. Each has to complete two legs in the following order: male 11.45km, female 10km, male 10km, female 10.745km.
In other good news for Australia, 14-year-old Arisa Trew handled gold medal favouritism with aplomb.
The Australian had entered the Olympics in strong form, winning qualifying events in Shanghai and Budapest. But she looked somewhat shaky in the preliminaries earlier on Tuesday, only qualifying in sixth of eight. The pressure built when Trew came unstuck on her first run, a big opening 540 followed by a Madonna before she fell to the ground. An excellent first run from Hiraki, scored at 91.98, only added to the occasion.
On her second run, Trew showed the composure that had many considering her the pre-Games favourite. She began with another big 540, before closing out the run without a wobble, earning a 90.11. It was enough to move Trew into the medal placings – and by the end of the field’s second runs, the Australian was ranked third.
It all came down to the final run, and Trew held nothing back. “I was just thinking on my third run that I had to land it no matter what,” she said afterwards. “I need to land this run.”
But the Australian track cycling team are ready to make their mark after a few olympiads in the wilderness.
The Australians are no longer underdogs. That changed over two quick-fire evenings at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome. On Monday, the Australian squad of Oliver Bleddyn, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien, surprised the field to qualify fastest, in a time of 3:42.958 – barely a second away from the world record. Just 24 hours later, in Australia’s first round encounter with Italy, the team not only set a new world record, but smashed the old one – finishing in a time of 3:40.730.
It has been five years since Australia were world champions in the men’s team pursuit. It has been two decades since the Australians were last Olympic gold medallists in the discipline, at Athens 2004.
The Netherlands, and Harrie Lavreysen in particular, are very fast in the velodrome.
In a one-sided final, Great Britain’s sprint trio of Jack Carlin, Hamish Turnbull and Ed Lowe, were valiant but powerless, as Lavreysen and teammates, Jeffrey Hoogland and Roy van den Berg led almost from the first bend.
As the Dutch, having already broken the world record earlier in the competition, sped to a world-record time of 40.949sec, Carlin, Turnbull and Lowe could only look on as Lavreysen and his two teammates raised their arms in celebration.
At a Games where Armand Duplantis turned the pole vault into performance art, Simone Biles did what Simone Biles does, and Novak Djokovic completed tennis, it would be easy to overlook the accomplishments of Cuban wrestler Mijaín López, but his fifth gold medal in a row sets new standards for endurance.
At the end, alone in the wrestling ring with his name ringing out from the stand, Mijaín López untied his boots and raised them to his lips. He placed them in the centre of the mat and walked away from his sixth Games as arguably the greatest Olympian of all time.
In winning the Greco-Roman wrestling title for an unprecedented fifth consecutive time just two weeks before his 42nd birthday, López has done what no other Olympian has achieved – and on a balmy night at the Champ de Mars Arena in Paris he made it look easy.
Despite the controversy surrounding her participation Imane Khelif remains on course for a boxing gold medal.
Imane Khelif’s extraordinary Olympic Games still has one round left to run. At a wild, steamy, increasingly unbound Roland Garros, Algeria’s fifth seed outclassed Janjaem Suwannapheng of Thailand to win the women’s 66kg semi-final bout and set up a final against Yang Liu of China on Friday.
This was a startling event in so many ways, in large part here because of its exuberantly Algerian tone. The snaking queue outside Roland Garros in the hours before this evening round of Olympic boxing had been heavily stacked with Algerian flags and football shirts. Centre court, reconfigured into a breathtaking boxing area, was similarly decked with the red and green.
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We begin our look back at yesterday’s action with a thrilling men’s 1500m final that saw Cole Hocker turn the Kerr v Ingebrigsten narrative on its head.
Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us: in the power and fallacy of narrative. This is, after all, the most competitive and volatile of events, a function not just of speed or endurance, but luck and tactics and sometimes blind opportunism.
An hour later, Hocker stepped on to the podium to receive his gold medal. He didn’t look stunned or overawed. He looked like he belonged there. Turns out he was the one with the vision all along.
We are open for business much earlier than usual today with an 07:30 start. That’s because it will take around three hours for the winners of the marathon race walk mixed relay to be decided, and it’s best that all that pavement pounding concludes before the midday sun turns the event from gruelling to dangerous.
From 09:00 we have women’s golf and taekwondo, followed by canoe sprint and handball at 09:30.
From 10:00 there’s more action than you can shake a shinty stick at. Except shinty, of course, which is not an Olympic sport. Although, it’s near cousin hurling was a demonstration event at St Louis 1904.
Here’s the best of yesterday’s images. Don’t dwell on the underwater shot of France’s artistic swimming team; consider yourselves warned.
For fans of per capita medal tables, I don’t have a fancy graphic for you, but I can tell you the tiny Caribbean islands of Dominica and St Lucia lead the way courtesy of their performances in track and field.
Of the nations that have won multiple medals via a range of athletes, the standouts are New Zealand (with surely more to come with the canoe sprint getting under way), Ireland (here’s looking at you Daniel Wiffen), and perennial overachievers Australia.
It’s taken longer than expected but the USA have wrested control of the medal table from China. Behind them Australia remain at the front of the peloton after another gold yesterday.
Athletes from 48 countries have now saluted their national anthem, with 76 NOCs in total earning a medal.
Preamble - Day 12 Schedule
Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of the 12th official day of competition of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
Day 11 belonged to the USA with Gabby Thomas and Cole Hocker excelling on the track, Amit Elor winning on the mat, and the USWNT continuing their return to form under Emma Hayes. Things are heating up in the velodrome, and there were notable results at opposite ends of the spectrum with Arisa Trew becoming Australia’s youngest gold medallist while Mijain Lopez broke new ground as the first athlete to win an individual event at five consecutive Games.
So what can we look forward to today?
Medal Events
🥇 Race Walk – mixed marathon relay (from 07:30)
🥇 Sailing – women’s & men’s dinghy / mixed multihull / mixed dinghy (from 12:13)
🥇 Sport Climbing – women’s speed (from 12:54)
🥇 Weightlifting – men’s 61kg (from 15:00)
🥇 Skateboarding – men’s park (from 17:40)
🥇 Pole Vault – women’s (from 18:15)
🥇 Cycling – men’s & women’s team pursuit (from 18:04)
🥇 Wrestling – men’s Greco-Roman 77kg & 97kg / women’s freestyle 50kg (from 18:15)
🥇 Artistic Swimming – team acrobatic routine (from 19:30)
🥇 Weightlifting – women’s 49kg (from 19:30)
🥇 Discus – men’s (from 20:25)
🥇 Taekwondo – women’s 49kg & men’s 58kg (from 21:19)
🥇 400m – men’s (from 21:20)
🥇 3000m Steeplechase – men’s (from 21:43)
🥇 Boxing – men’s 63.5kg & 80kg (from 22:34)
*(All times listed are Paris local)
Simon Burnton’s day-by-day guide
Sailing: mixed dinghy medal race
In which Britain’s odd couple Vita Heathcote and Chris Grube – she’s 23 and going into her first Games, he’s 39 and has been tempted out of retirement for one last go – have a chance of medals after coming second at the world championships in Mallorca this year, despite suffering from illness, injury and having worked together only for a matter of months. Heathcote’s uncle, Nick Rogers, won silver medals in 2004 and 2008. Spain’s Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman, who won that event in Mallorca, and Japan’s Keiju Okada and Miho Yoshioka are the key rivals.
Artistic swimming: team acrobatic routine
In 2022 World Aquatics changed its rules to allow men to compete in artistic swimming at the Olympics, and it looked like the American Bill May was going to be the one to make history. In February he was in the US team that won world championship bronze. “They’re going to see a male in the Olympics, and it’s going to inspire them, whether it be a male, female, anyone that has a dream,” he said. In June he was left out of the US squad. There will be no men in the artistic swimming this year. It’ll still be amazing, in its odd way.
Boxing
This could be the last round for Olympic boxing – the IOC has set a deadline of early next year to find a governing body to replace the IBA as its partners, leaving the sport’s place at Los Angeles 2028 in doubt. So catch it while you can.
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: jonathan.howcroft.casual@theguardian.com.
I’ll be around for the first few hours of the blog here in Australia, after which I’m handing over to Yara El-Shaboury.
