Paris 2024 Olympics day five: triathlons, diving, rowing and more – live | Paris Olympic Games 2024

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.

Triathlon is on!

Preamble – Day Five Schedule