Key events
Aussie cyclist Luke Plapp has undergone abdominal surgery after crashing out of rain-soaked men’s time trial at @Paris2024 yesterday. Oz team says the medal hope “slid under a barrier fence shortly after passing the first checkpoint approx 14km into 32km course.” @Channel9 @wwos
— Sophie Smith (@SophieSmith86) July 28, 2024
Permit me a slight aside if you will. The Salukvadze story has been a staple of recent Games as she has chalked off a host of records. Another story that is always a delight to revisit every olympiad is that of Ágnes Keleti. If you don’t know of her, she is one of the most remarkable characters in sporting history.
Keleti is newsworthy today because she is the oldest surviving Olympic gold medallist. She’s 103 and still going strong.
Her story brings together the holocaust, the Hungarian revolution of 1956, and some serious Olympic medal-winning.
Some other headlines from the opening day include the incredible story of Nino Salukvadze. In Chateauroux the Georgian shooter became the first 10-time female olympian. Way back in Seoul 1988 Salukvadze won gold and silver for the USSR and has since competed alongside her son and carried the Georgian flag on three occasions.
Salukvadze already had the record for most Olympic appearances by a female athlete and is now tied with Canadian showjumper Ian Millar for the most for any athlete. Salukvadze is the only Olympian to compete at 10 Summer Games in a row, unlike Millar, whose appearances weren’t consecutive because Canada boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
It’s also a huge night for Australia’s women’s football team. The Matildas are enormously popular at home, but they opened their Olympic campaign with a tame defeat to Germany in front of a sparse crowd. Victory over Zambia, the lowest ranked side in Group B, is essential.
Meanwhile, Australia’s qualification hopes have been helped by the extraordinary situation that has engulfed defending champions Canada, who have been docked six points and seen their coach banned for a year.
Expectations are sky high down under for another golden day. Jess Fox, the K1 world champion, is in action on the whitewater. Chloe Covell is a contender in the women’s street skateboarding. And then back in the pool Emma McKeon, Australia’s most decorated olympian, will be out to add to her incredible haul in 100m butterfly.
Later on, in the pool, Ariarne Titmus (AUS) triumphed in one of the races of the Games, leading home Summer McIntosh (CAN) and Katie Ledecky (USA) in the 400m freestyle. All three have held the world record at various times since Tokyo, setting up one of the most eagerly anticipated finals in Paris. Kieran Pender was poolside at La Défense Arena.
It had been billed as one of the marquee races of the swim program in Paris – the race of the decade, even the century. It was supposed to be a nail-biting contest. Instead it was a coronation. Titmus executed her race plan flawlessly, leading at every turn. McIntosh pushed her hard, but the Australian had half a body length by 250m and ultimately won by almost a second.
It’s early in Europe, late in the US, but mid-afternoon in Australia, perfect for basking in green and gold glory.
A day that ended with the southern cross on top of the medal table was kickstarted by Grace Brown who prevailed in a treacherous time trial on the slippery streets of the historic city. Jack Snape was there.
The gold was an extraordinary achievement after Brown only took up cycling at 23 following an injury-plagued cross country career. “When I was running, I had this feeling, like if I really nailed everything, maybe I could get on an Olympic team or something,” she said.
“But I kept getting injured, so I never was able to get up to that next level. I started cycling just out of frustration with my injuries and – I don’t know – it just went really well.”
While we’re on the subject of surfing, a quick public service announcement on the pronunciation of Teahupo’o. In Tahitian every syllable ends in a vowel, and when there are vowel clusters each is pronounced as a separate syllable. So, Teahupo’o is Tay-a-hoop-oh-oh.
For some reason “cho-poo” or similar has become commonplace. If you hear someone saying that you must cast them into the ocean and let Poseidon do the rest.
Storm clouds were welcomed 15,000km away in Tahiti with stormy weather heralding excellent conditions for the first day of the surfing competition at the famous Teahupo’o break. Kieran Pender savoured the swells, sets, and spray.
On Saturday, half a world away from Paris, the second edition of Olympic surfing started with a bang – quite literally. As powerful Southern Ocean swells reach the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, having crossed thousands of kilometres of open ocean, the water heaves upwards and explodes on contact with the reef. The terrifying result is the fearsome Teahupo’o (which roughly translates as “wall of skulls”). And it offers the perfect gladiatorial arena for the world’s best surfers to vie for Olympic gold.
While the sun is shining now, the poor weather of recent days is going to have some lasting effects, most notably on the quality of the water in the river Seine. Paris’ famous waterway is scheduled to host the marathon swim and the swimming leg of the triathlon, but that will only happen if the water is deemed safe for athletes.
Swimming in the Seine is the most controversial and ambitious aspect of the Games. Lots of money has been spent cleaning up the river and building stormwater facilities to minimise runoff during periods of rain, but even so, it’s a mightily difficult problem to solve when faced with such a small window of opportunity. Sean Ingle has more.
Olympic triathletes in Paris are set to miss their first practice session in the River Seine on Sunday because of the deteriorating water quality.
Two days of practice are scheduled before the men’s event on Tuesday, with the women’s race taking place a day later. However, organisers admit the heavy rain over the past 24 hours means the water will likely fail its next test at 4am on Sunday morning.
The first action of the day is not for a couple of hours, and it all kicks off with another busy schedule of badminton from 8:30 local time. Then we’ve got some beach volleyball, handball, rowing, shooting, and volleyball (9:00), archery, gymnastics, and fencing (9:30).
And after a couple of grey days the weather is set fair to bathe the city of light in golden sunshine.
The medal table after one day of the Games makes pleasant reading for Australia. They lead the way with three golds and match the USA’s overall haul of five medals. With more swimming finals to come this evening there’s every possibility they retain that position for another day.
Preamble – Day Two Schedule
Jonathan Howcroft
Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of the second official day of competition of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
The Games exploded into life yesterday with China shooting and diving their way to the first two gold medals of the fortnight, and France’s rugby sevens outfit securing what will prove – even at this early stage – one of the most popular triumphs of the Olympics. But day two begins with Australia topping the medal table after an extraordinary run of success, especially in the pool.
So what can we look forward to today?
Medal Events
Shooting – men’s & women’s 10m air pistol (from 9:30)
Mountain Bike – women’s cross country (from 14:10)
Judo – men 66kg / women 52kg (from 16:00)
Archery – women’s team (from 16:48)
Skateboarding – women’s street (from 17:00)
Canoe Slalom – women’s kayak single (from 17:45)
Swimming (from 20:30) – men’s 400m IM / women’s 100m butterfly / men’s 100m breaststroke.
Fencing (from 20:50) – women’s individual foil / men’s individual epee.
*(All times listed are Paris local)
Simon Burnton’s day-by-day guide
Swimming
Between 2014 and 2020 Team GB’s Adam Peaty won every available global gold in the 100m breaststroke – including at two Olympics, two Commonwealth Games and three world championships – and broke the world record five times. But after Tokyo he stepped away from the pool, citing mental health issues. He returned last October, with his eyes on this day. His key rival will be Qin Haiyang, China’s breaststroke king, who in the 2023 world championships completed a treble of 50m, 100m and 200m.Men’s basketball
The United States have won 16 of the 20 men’s basketball golds, including the last four, and with LeBron James in an all-star side are inevitable favourites for another. James’s notable teammates include Stephen Curry, a four-time NBA champion, two-time NBA MVP, and by a massive margin the NBA’s all-time three-point leader, who remarkably is playing his first Olympics at 36. Today they get their tournament under way against a Serbia side that has in its ranks this year’s NBA MVP in Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets.Women’s street skateboarding
Japan won four of the six women’s skateboarding medals in Tokyo, including both golds, and in the street discipline have five of the world’s current top seven (in park they have four of the top six). But Brazil’s world No 3, Rayssa Leal, has high hopes. Nicknamed Fadinha (little fairy – after her first viral video, of her attempting and eventually nailing a heelflip in a fairy costume aged seven), Leal won silver in Tokyo aged 13, has got better since, and will be out to sprinkle some magic at La Concorde.
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 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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