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Paris 2024 Olympics day five: triathlons go ahead, plus diving, rowing and more – live
By Jonathan Howcroft (now) and Barry Glendenning,
2 hours ago
The women's individual triathlon is go. Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP
7.16am BST
Those four triathletes drag their sodden bodies out of the Seine, jog along the starting pontoon and dive back into the water for a much shorter lap two. The field is strung out to extraordinary proportions with a massive 50 seconds separating first and 15th and an unbelievable one minute 58 covering first to last.
7.13am BST
Duffy (BER) continues to lead the swimming leg, putting clean(ish) water between her and the chasing pack. It looks like one heck of a slog though during this upstream portion of the race. Bianca Seregni (ITA) is in second place with Vittoria Lopes (BRA) in third and Beth Potter (GBR) fourth.
7.07am BST
The triathletes have reached the first turn at 910 of the 1500m course. Some of the back markers are almost swimming on the spot to fight the extraordinarily strong current.
Defending champion Flora Duffy (BER) has moved her way to the tip of the arrowhead of swimmers, hugging the riverbank to minimise the impact of the current.
7.04am BST
The current in the Seine is reportedly one metre per second, which means swimming upstream is going to be exhausting. Some beautiful *triathlon cliches* on the world feed commentary with the truism that you can’t win the triathlon during the swimming leg, but you can lose it .
Replays of the start suggest it wasn’t a clean breakaway and their may be some false start penalties.
Updated at 7.07am BST
7.00am BST
55 intrepid women triathletes have splashed their way into the soupy Seine for one of the most anticipated events of the Paris Games.
It has been raining all morning but there are thousands of fans camped on the bridges and riverbanks of the French capital to cheer on the competitors. Allez!
6.51am BST
The women’s triathlon features an opening swimming leg of 1500m (two laps of a 750m course in the Seine), then a 40km bike ride (seven 5.7km loops through Paris), finishing with a 10km run (four 2km laps).
6.48am BST
French supporters will be lining the triathlon route cheering on home stars Emma Lombardi and Cassandre Beaugrand the number one and number three ranked triathletes in the world.
Sandwiched between the two Frenchwomen is German Lisa Tertsch, while rankings four and five are occupied by a pair of British athletes, Beth Potter and Kate Waugh.
The defending champion is Flora Duffy, who became Bermuda’s first Olympic gold medallist when she finished ahead of Georgia Taylor-Brown (GBR) and Katie Zaferes (USA). Taylor-Brown lines up again today.
6.39am BST
Here’s the triathlon course that will show off the incredible sights of Paris city centre.
6.32am BST
We’re just about half-an-hour away from the start of the women’s triathlon. It’s an event that has featured heavily in the build-up to the games with the swimming portion of the race taking place in the river Seine.
Among the starters is American dual-sport phenomenon Taylor Knibb. The 26-year-old is a longer distance Ironman 70.3 specialist, who also qualified for Team USA in the road cycling time trial earlier this Olympics, finishing 19th.
In modern times, competing in two sports in the same summer is considerably less common. A Guardian analysis of data from the Olympic-stats site Olympedia turned up no athlete pulling double duty at the same Summer Olympics since 1992 (athletes such as cyclist-rower Rebecca Romero and baseball player-speed skater Eddy Alvarez have won medals in two sports at separate Olympics).
That drought will end on Wednesday, pollution permitting , when triathlete/cyclist Taylor Knibb competes in the women’s triathlon in Paris, four days after finishing 19th in the road cycling time trial , in which she crashed several times on a slippery day in Paris.
Staying with football, it’s a huge day for the women’s competition with the eight quarter-finalists to be decided after the final round of games. With 12 teams starting the tournament only four sides will miss out, with the winless trio of New Zealand, Nigeria and Zambia unlikely to proceed. The final spot is very much up for grabs on and off the pitch.
Defending gold medallists Canada head into the final round of matches on zero points despite winning both their matches. That is because they were deducted six points for spying on a training session of group rivals New Zealand. However, Canada have appealed that penalty with the court of arbitration for sport and a decision is expected to be handed down around 12:00 local time.
Should that penalty be reduced or erased, the qualification race becomes significantly tougher for the likes of Australia, Brazil and Colombia. Australia’s Matildas, heavily fancied coming into the tournament, were thumped 3-0 by Germany then escaped with a 6-5 victory over Zambia. They face Emma Hayes’ resurgent USWNT in Marseille desperate for a result that keeps them in the mix.
Speaking of things hotting up, Paris was sweltering yesterday with temperatures in the mid-30s. The athletes’ village is not fitted with air-conditioning.
The issue of air conditioning had been a hot one before the Games. As part of Paris’s commitment to a greener Olympics, it was decided that air conditioning would not be installed with officials instead promising that the athletes rooms would be kept cool through a geothermal water system pumping cold water underneath the buildings.
The men’s football tournament is hotting up with hosts France through to a blockbuster quarter-final match-up against bitter rivals Argentina.
Tensions have been heightened between the two football nations since the 2022 World Cup final, when Argentina fans chanted about French players with African heritage. After the albiceleste won the Copa América final in July, a video showed Argentina players singing similar chants .
That led the French football federation to file a complaint with Fifa over “racist and discriminatory remarks”. While that investigation is still ongoing, a full-scale diplomatic incident erupted between the countries before the Argentina president Javier Milei met with France’s leader, Emmanuel Macron, to smooth things over.
Friday’s quarter-final line-up is as follows:
France v Argentina Egypt v Paraguay Morocco v USA Spain v Japan
The bespectacled Irishman Daniel Wiffen was a novelty when he swam to an 800m-1500m freestyle double at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships, but he is now a bona fide star of his sport and a national hero after battling to 800m freestyle gold last night.
Wiffen is the first Irishman to ever win an Olympic gold medal in the pool, and only the second Irish athlete ever to do it after, ahem, Michelle Smith de Bruin, who won three of them back at Atlanta in ‘96 and was banned for four years soon after when she was caught tampering with her urine samples. Wiffen wasn’t even born when all that happened, and while it won’t much worry him either way, some of the older people around Irish swimming will feel awfully glad they finally have another Olympic champion to celebrate after all these years.
Clarisse Agbegnenou was one of just four individual gold medal-winners for France in Tokyo, making her one of the faces of the Games in the build-up to Paris. But the judoka had to settle for bronze in the 63kg category.
It was still a moment to cherish though with Agbegnenou making her daughter part of her celebrations, following her close involvement throughout her preparation for the competition. Angelique Chrisafis has more.
Agbégnénou’s popularity in France rests on her extraordinary personal story. She was born premature in the Brittany city of Rennes, where she had major kidney surgery as a tiny baby, and was in a coma. She is now a patron of premature baby charities. Talent-spotted as a teenager, she received elite training and quickly rose up the ranks to become one of France’s biggest judo stars, in both individual and team competitions.
She said in the run-up to the Paris Olympics that her trailblazing for elite women athletes who had children was one of her biggest achievements – she took her baby to training in order to feed her. “I want women athletes who follow me to feel free and legitimate, to break codes to change mentalities and change the rules. We can have a life as a woman and mother as well as champion at the same time,” she told Le Parisien before competing in Paris.
We’re roughly halfway through the swimming carnival, but there is concern for the final few days with Covid rearing its ugly head. Great Britain’s Adam Peaty and Australia’s Lani Pallister are among the confirmed cases, with the USA and Romania also believed to have recorded positive tests.
As we know all too well from the rolling lockdowns of 2020-2021, this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
There is no mandatory requirement to withdraw from the Games in cases of Covid, leaving nations to implement their own policies with athletes and staff.
Australia’s swim team, especially its female contingent, are dominating in the pool. That includes Kaylee McKeown, who defended her 100m backstroke title, and looks destined for more glory before the end of the meet.
The Queenslander very much swims her own race, in and out of the pool. While many athletes offer up platitudes to that effect, there is a sense with McKeown that her offbeat approach is very much the real thing.
Speaking of Andy Murray, the great Scot prolonged his valedictory tournament with another gritty victory alongside doubles partner Dan Evans. Jonathan Liew had the pleasure of reporting on another trademark Murray performance.
There is pain in his joints and a heaviness in his step, and yet as Andy Murray reels away in victory as the clock strikes 10.30pm local time, he looks like a child again: the child who first swung a racket in anger, the child who first discovered the pure joy of victory.
Into the good night they went, Murray and Dan Evans, and not gently either but with force and purpose and every intention of returning to fight another day. In a way this has been the motif of Murray’s elongated final curtain call, perhaps even his career: a refusal to vacate the stage before he is ready, a desire to eke out every ounce of talent in his body.
Perhaps, as he and Evans came back from two match points down in a deciding tie-break, there was even a kind of revulsion to them, a determination that no, it would not end here, at a quarter-full Court Suzanne-Lenglen against the world No 35s from Belgium. The mind is still willing, the body is still just about there for him, and the neck is just two more wins from a fourth Olympic medal.
Unsurprisingly, Biles features in another magnificent gallery of images from yesterday’s action. But for my money the shot of the day is the one capturing Andy Murray and Dan Evans in synchronised delight following their second nail-biting victory of the men’s doubles tennis competition.
There’s only one place to begin our look back at day four and that’s the Bercy Arena, where Simone Biles exorcised the demons of Tokyo and ensured she would leave Paris as one of the shining lights of the Games. Barney Ronay got to enjoy the spectacle firsthand.
Paris was getting the Biles-industrial complex, the Biles narrative arc, which reached its full extension on a wonderful night of flex and twang and defiance of the elements; one that ended, naturally, with gold for the US women.
That final Biles routine was visceral and at times hair-raising. She played the hits. She did Biles 1, Biles 2. She produced an extraordinary release of energy, that explosive athletic grace that looks at times almost like an optical illusion.
What is gymnastics exactly? Performance art? Hard-edge competitive sport? At one point in her balance beam routine Biles did an insane triple backflip (repeat: on a thin, square bar) like a wheel rolling down an incline, one of those moments where she seems to turn the entire event into something else, movements that are strange, liquid, and basically unlike any other human on the planet.
The business end of the medal table remains a free for all with Japan still leading the way with seven gold medals. The unfamiliar look is largely a consequence of the USA experiencing a poorer than expected start to the Games, especially in the pool. US athletes have won 26 medals overall (twice as many as Japan) but only four of them have been gold. In the pool, US swimmers have won 15 medals, but only two gold.
The number of NOCs on the medal table is now up to 43 with the likes of Tajikistan and Guatemala joining the party.
After the disappointment of yesterday’s postponement of the men’s race, and longstanding concerns over the water quality in the Seine, it will come as a huge relief to event organisers that the triathlon has been confirmed on today’s schedule. The women’s race is up first at 08:00 followed by the men at 10:45.
5.00am BST
Preamble - Day Five Schedule
Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of the fifth official day of competition of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
But Tuesday was also one of disappointment. The postponement of the men’s triathlon due to the water quality of the Seine raised the possibility of the three-discipline event being reduced to just running and cycling, while 12 time zones away in Tahiti the surfing competition succumbed to mother nature on a day scheduled for medal events. And there was also the first major let down for the hosts with one of the faces of the games, Clarisse Agbegnenou, failing to defend her 63kg judo crown , although she did claim bronze.
Simon Burnton’s day-by-day guide: BMX freestyle In Tokyo Britain’s Charlotte Worthington and Declan Brooks went into their finals seeded fourth and seventh respectively and came out with a gold and a bronze, illustrating the event’s unpredictability. Both are back again but Britain’s best medal chance looks to be 23-year-old Kieran Reilly, the reigning world champion who made his name by becoming the first person to land a triple kick flair in 2022.
Gymnastics: men’s all-around final Daiki Hashimoto won gold in Tokyo three years ago, has won two world championships since and goes into today’s all-around final as favourite. “I will remain steadfast in surpassing my previous accomplishments. My commitment is unwavering, fuelled by a resolute determination,” he said this year. Meanwhile the US are hoping for what would be just their second title, and first since 2004. “We’re going to be very deadly. This is going to be a fun Olympics. We are fully loaded,” said Fred Richard, who won world championship bronze last year.
Swimming France’s Léon Marchand is the son of Xavier Marchand and Céline Bonnet, both former Olympic swimmers, is coached at Arizona State by Michael Phelps’s former mentor Bob Bowman, is probably the greatest swimmer in the world, and is about to have the biggest night of his life. The 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke finals were originally due to run consecutively, but after intensive lobbying the schedule was changed to separate the events by an hour and a half and give Marchand a greater chance of success. Now he has to perform.
Other unmissable moments will include the women’s and (rescheduled) men’s triathlon races in the Seine and through the heart of Paris; Australian flag bearer Jess Fox looking for her second gold of the Games in the C-1 canoe slalom; Katie Ledecky cruising to an eighth career gold in the 1500m freestyle and the fastest sharks in the pool flexing their muscles in the men’s & women’s 100m freestyle; Viktor Axelsen beginning the defence of his men’s singles badminton title; Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz taking the court in the men’s singles tennis; and crunch time in the women’s football with the final round of group matches including the Matildas v USWNT .
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 Barry Glendenning in the UK.
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