Paris 2024 Olympics day seven: athletics, golf, rowing, swimming and more – live | Paris Olympic Games 2024

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: a shoot-off for bronze between 20-year-old world champion Zhang Qiongyue and the USA’s Sagen Maddalena, tied on 452.9. Maddalena wins! China take bronze.

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: we are about to lost the fourth place shooter … and it is Jeanette Hegg Duestad of Norway who finished agonisingly fourth for the second Olympics in succession. What a shame for her. It means medals are guaranteed for the USA, China and Switzerland. We are about to find out the bronze medallist on the next shot …

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: Natalia Kochanska of Poland has gone in sixth place. Jeanette Hegg Duestad of Norway has pulled out a 10.9 and a 10.4 and is hanging in there. She is fourth, where she finished in Tokyo. Nadine Ungerank of Austria is eliminated in fifth.

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: this final is going to move quite fast now, as they are down to the last six, and then there is an elimination every shot. Hold on to your horses, as they say.

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: the competitors are on the last round of standing shooting now. At the end of this two will be eliminated. The standing position has shaken up the standings, with Zhang Qiongyue of China out in front, with Chiara Leone of Switzerland, Nadine Ungerank of Austria and Jeanette Hegg Duestad of Norway in contention for the medals.

Men’s decathlon: Norway’s Markus Rooth means business, and has just won the first men’s 100m race in the decathlon in 10.71 seconds, which is a personal best. He was well pleased, judging by the celebrations. Here is a shot of the crowd in the Stade de France for this morning session of athletics.

If you didn’t already have that Olympics feeling, then may I present to you a morning of track and field. Track and field, baby.

Or “the athletics” if you prefer the King’s English. We are an international blog here, with an international audience, so you can take your pick.

On the programme this morning is men’s decathlon, women’s high jump qualification, men’s hammer qualification, prelims and round 1 in the women’s 100m and men’s 1,500m. I cannot wait.

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: they have moved into the prone position part of this competition now. Sagen Maddalena of the USA holds the narrowest of leads, 0.1 in front of world champion from China, Zhang Qiongyue. There are three rounds of prone shooting, then a nine minute changeover period while they get ready for the business end of the standing position.

Men’s handball: Denmark are leading Hungary 16-12 in their Group B match at half-time. Denmark’s Mathias Gidsel has six goals already, including three in the last five minutes of the half.

Denmark have won all their matches so far and are top of Group B, already having secured a quarter-finals spot. Hungary are not in such a comfortable position. They have only won one of their three matches. France and Argentina, the two teams below Hungary in the table at the moment, play at 11am Paris time today. If Hungary lose and France go on to win, the hosts would overtake the Hungarians in the standings.

Women’s Badminton doubles: Malaysia’s Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan have got back in to their semi-final with China’s world number one pairing of Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan by taking the second game. Muralitharan has just taken a heavy tumble though, appearing to hurt her wrist, and needed some medical treatment. They are back playing but it looked painful and worrying. The Chinese are leading the third game 16-12.

The social media accounts of the Pairs Olympics are bidding farewell to the wonderful Andy Murray this morning.

If you missed it, overnight my colleague Alexandra Topping reported on Murray’s exit from Roland Garros.

Women’s 50m rifle three positions: the final of this has started. Competitors are shooting in the kneeling position first. Sagen Maddalena of the USA leads after the first round of five shots each.

Women’s beach volleyball: it is the final day of matches in Pool E of the competition today. In the opening encounter Lithuania’s Monika Paulikienė and Ainė Raupelytė and Japan’s Akiko Hasegawa and Miki Ishii face each other. Both pairs have lost their first two matches, so this is effectively a straight knock-out match, with the winners getting a shot at a lucky loser play-off place, and the losers heading out. It is the Japanese who have taken the first set.

Men’s golf: they have begun to tee-off already at Le Golf National. Adrian Meronk of Poland, who is 2 over and ten shots behind leader Hideki Matsuyama has just given it a might thwack at the first hole.

Hello from London, Martin Belam here. It has just gone 9am in Paris which means lots of team sports have just got under way again. If you are just joining, here is a reminder of what should be in store in terms of medals today …

Medal Events

🥇 Shooting – women’s 50m rifle three positions (from 9.30)
🥇 Rowing – men’s & women’s pairs / men’s & women’s LWT double sculls (from 10.42)
🥇 Diving – men’s 3m springboard synchro (from 11.00)
🥇 Sailing – women’s & men’s skiff / women’s & men’s windsurfing (from 12.13)
🥇 Trampoline – women’s (from 13.50)
🥇 Equestrian – team jumping (from 14.00)
🥇 Badminton – mixed doubles (from 15.00)
🥇 Archery – mixed team (from 16.43)
🥇 Judo – women’s 78kg & men’s 100kg (from 16.00)
🥇 Tennis – mixed doubles gold (from 19.00)
🥇 Fencing – men’s epee team (from 19.30)
🥇 Trampoline – men’s (from 19.50)
🥇 Swimming – men’s 50m freestyle, 200m IM / women’s 200m backstroke (from 20.30)
🥇 Athletics – men’s 10,000m (from 21.20)
🥇 BMX Racing – men’s & women’s (from 21.35)

*(All times listed are Paris local)

Badminton: The world No 1 pair of Chen Qingchen & Jia Yifan (CHN) are cruising in their semi-final against Pearly Tan & Thinaah Muralitharan (MAS). They won the opening set in a hurry and already have a stranglehold on the second.

I always ask the start of the day for you to inform us of any oversights in our scheduling and point us in the direction of interesting stories, and Inge Kersten has done just that, reminding me that Sifan Hassan begins her absurd Olympic program today.

The Dutch distance runner won 5,000m and 10,000m gold in Tokyo, as well as 1500m bronze. In Paris she is attempting to defend those gold medals but has swapped the 1500m for the marathon. This is her itinerary:

Hassan is ranked 7th in the world for the 5,000, 9th for the 10,000, and 2nd for the marathon.

Badminton: The world No 1 pair of Chen Qingchen & Jia Yifan (CHN) have already beaten Pearly Tan & Thinaah Muralitharan (MAS) 2-0 in the group stage.

The Chinese stars won silver in Tokyo, since when they have won their third and fourth world championship gold medals. They have yet to drop a set in Paris. The Malaysian team have nothing like those credentials.

The first action of the day has begun over in Porte de la Chapelle Arena. As has become customary at these Games the amuse bouche is badminton and on the menu is women’s doubles semi-finals.

First up we have:

Chen Qingchen & Jia Yifan (CHN) v Pearly Tan & Thinaah Muralitharan (MAS)

Followed by:

Liu Shengshu & Tan Ning (CHN) v Nami Matsuyama & Chiharu Shida (JPN)

Staying with athletes nearer the end of their careers than the start, the story of Luxembourg’s Ni Xia Lian makes for a fun read.

On Monday, Luxembourg’s Ni Xia Lian, who was born on 4 July 1963, became the oldest competitor in the history of the Olympics to win a table tennis match when she beat the 31-year-old Turkish player Sibel Altinkaya. On Wednesday, she became the oldest player in the history of the Olympics to lose one, too, when she was beaten by the Chinese world and Olympic silver medallist Sun Yingsha. Sun, 23, who is the world No 1 and won team gold in Tokyo, isn’t just 38 years younger than Ni, she’s nine years younger than her son, too.

Helen Glover yesterday added a silver medal to the golds she won at London 2012 and Rio 2016, with the British rower hoping her success continues to normalise the participation of mothers in elite sport.

Normalising it is really important. Sport is a massive reflection of society and to show you can come back to something and excel, not despite having children but because you’ve had children, is a message that there should be a space for women to come back.”

I will never tire of studding this blog with surfing images. This latest excuse is to bring you up to speed with action that happened in the Tahitian timezone (Paris +12 hours).

In the women’s event, defending champion Carissa Moore was knocked out at the quarter-final stage, leaving the semi-final draw looking as follows:

Caroline Marks USA (9) v Johanne Defay FRA (2)
Tatiana Weston-Webb BRA (1) v Brisa Hennessy CRC (15)

While in the men’s competition we’re looking at:

Alonso Correa PER (5) v Kauli Vaast FRA (3)
Gabriel Medina BRA (1) v Jack Robinson AUS (13)

More on the story that’s captured global attention overnight.

And some background reading from Sean Ingle.

Australia are enjoying a superb Games in and on water, but as attention turns to track and field hopes are high the gold rush need not slow down.

Something else helping athletics is genuine star power. The likes of US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson. Preliminary heats of the women’s 100m begin today at 10:35.

Athletics at Paris 2024 will be helped by some genuine rivalries. None better than Josh Kerr (GBR) v Jakob Ingebrigtsen (NOR) in the 1500m. Qualifying starts today at 11:10 local time with Kerr in heat one, Ingebrigtsen in heat three.

Kerr has accused his main rival of having “flaws on the track and in the manners realm” and being surrounded by “yes men”. Ingebrigtsen has countered by claiming he could beat Kerr blindfolded when fit.

It is the type of popcorn-grabbing fare that a struggling sport such as athletics longs for and has prompted natural comparisons with the golden era of British miling in the 1980s when Seb Coe and Steve Ovett rarely hid their antipathy for one another while battling for dominance.

Track and field inside the Stade de France begins today. After a post-Usain Bolt lull, and with the support of Netflix, athletics is bullish again about its primetime offering.

It’s not just athletes in the latest super spikes who have a spring in their step at these Olympics. The whole of track and field does too. And the sport is increasingly not afraid to shout about it.

“Athletics is the heart and soul of the Olympic Games,” said the World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, on Thursday. “These will be exceptional Games with jaw-dropping sport and the most exceptional talents we have seen in any generation.”

After five days, Paris 2024 has seen only a single world record fall in a swimming event. That compares with six new swimming world records set at Tokyo in 2021 and eight at Rio in 2018. Even the much-hyped women’s 400 metre freestyle – billed as the “race of the century” – failed to topple any personal bests from the three most recent world-record holders, Ariarne Titmus (Australia), Summer McIntosh (Canada) and Katie Ledecky (United States).

Staying with Australia, the country’s women’s football team rank among the biggest disappointments of this Olympics so far, so it came as no surprise when it was announced yesterday that coach Tony Gustavsson would not have his contract renewed. The Swede benefitted from a lack of meaningful scrutiny during a four-year tenure that promised much and ultimately delivered little, despite enormous public support and a World Cup on home soil.

The next coach will be charged with refreshing a small core group of players that have been replied upon for a number of years. The growing popularity of the sport and the importance of the Matildas demands that such a process is more robustly appraised that Gustavsson ever was.

Two-time gold medallist Andy Murray is on the shortlist for Great Britain’s greatest Olympian of all-time. In Australia, that battle could be being played out in real time during the Paris Games.

Australia has a long and glittering Olympic history. But there is one record no Australian has previously surpassed. Since the first Australians competed at the 1896 Games, none have won more than three gold medals in individual events.

At Paris 2024, three Australians across two sports are on the cusp of history and an achievement that would guarantee elevation to the pantheon of greatest Olympians. Jess Fox, Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown have already won gold at the 2024 Games, and now have the possibility to go where no Australian has gone before.

I was at the Australian Open in January 2019 when tournament organisers clipped together a hastily arranged retirement montage for the chronically injured Andy Murray. Over five years, and many montages, later one of the greatest British athletes of all time finally has finally bowed out of top-level sport.

While the Olympics is necessarily about sporting greatness it is also an opportunity for the world to come together and consider a collective response to pressing issues of the time. One such is the issue of gender eligibility.

The topic exploded yesterday when Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned her bout against the Algerian Imane Khelif after 46 seconds. Khelif is one of two boxers permitted to fight at the Olympics despite being disqualified from the women’s world championships last year for failing gender eligibility tests.

Before the fight The International Olympic Committee (IOC) came under fire for permitting Khelif and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan to compete in the women’s category at these Games.

Last year both fighters were disqualified from the world championships, with the International Boxing Association (IBA) president, Umar Kremlev, saying that DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded”. XY is the combination of chromosomes in males, while XX is the combination in females.

But last night the IOC issued a statement that confirmed that said both boxers had “complied” with its entry regulations and “have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category”.

“As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport,” it added.

From one GOAT to another; Katie Ledecky yesterday became the female swimmer with the most medals in Olympic history. She now has eight gold, four silver, and a bronze. One at London 2012, five at Rio 2016, four at Tokyo 2020, and three so far at Paris 2024.

Ledecky is a lock for a medal in the 800m freestyle, a race in which she holds the 29 fastest times in history, and five of the top six times this year.

One night after the 27-year-old American became the first female swimmer to win gold medals at four different Olympics after retaining her title in the women’s 1500m freestyle, Ledecky added a 13th Olympic medal, one more than countrywomen Jenny Thompson, Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin and Australia’s Emma McKeon.

Not for the first time these Olympics (and probably not for the last) we begin our daily retrospective by focussing on Simone Biles. As Andy Bull writes: “With Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps gone, Biles is the last of the great Olympic stars of the 21st ­century who is still competing in the Games. She is the biggest draw here, the one athlete who can persuade people who do not much like or care for sport to switch on and watch the best to ever do it.”

And Biles has emitted that star power at full wattage in Paris, helping the USA to team gold, then yesterday securing individual all-around gold to secure her status as the greatest gymnast in history. In case you were in any doubt, her bejewelled goat-shaped pendant spoke volumes.

The curated selection of the best images from yesterday’s action includes another beauty from the boxing competition.

Badminton is our first action of the day with play under way at 08:30 local time. At 09:00 action begins in the beach volleyball, 3×3 basketball, golf, volleyball, handball, and shooting.

It’s taken almost a week but the two titans of world sport have finally made their way to the top of the medal table. China lead the competition for golds, thanks to strong performances in shooting and diving, while the USA are way out in front for overall medals, but only a quarter of those have been gold.

The pool is a microcosm of Team USA’s Games so far with a healthy haul of 20 medals but just four golds. Australia, with five visits to the top step of the podium already stand an excellent chance of winning the meet.

France have only finished in the top five at an Olympics once since the war, and that was London 1948, but the hosts are on track for a result to remember following a fast start.

29 national anthems in total have now been heard across the events, with 50 NOCs receiving medals. Among those is Guatemala, a regular at the Olympics since 1968, but with only one silver medal to show for it – until this week. First, trap shooter Jean Pierre Brol became his country’s maiden bronze medallist, then fellow trap shooter Adriana Ruano won Guatemala’s first Olympic gold.

Ruano originally trained as a gymnast, representing Guatemala at the 2010 Pan American Championships, but she suffered a serious back injury, forcing her to train her competitive focus on another sport.

Preamble – Day Seven Schedule

Jonathan Howcroft