Team GB win silver in women’s 4x100m relay and madison

Thursday’s action had another gold medal for Team GB, after Ellie Aldridge won women’s kite in Marseille, and the Welsh cyclist Emma Finucane claimed bronze in the keirin. In the athletics, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won a magnificent 400m hurdles race, breaking the world record for the sixth time in her career – World Athletics have called it the greatest ever run by a woman. In the boxing ring, Cindy Ngamba, a refugee based in Bolton, won the first medal for the Refugee Olympic Team when she won silver.

Stay tuned throughout the day for news and analysis from our team of writers in Paris.

John Westerby: The Dutch coaches are protesting angrily to race stewards about Jack Carlin in that bronze medal match. He’s due to be presented with his medal shortly… let’s see whether he actually gets it!

Dutch coach is walking away shaking his head, so that probably means Carlin is safe.

James Gheerbrant: Absolute scenes in the men’s football gold medal match at the Parc des Princes. Magnès Akliouche’s clever finish cut the deficit to 3-2 but it seemed that Spain were going to hold on — but with the clock ticking down the referee was summoned to the screen and awarded France a VAR-assisted penalty! Jean-Philippe Mateta takes the coolest of run-ups, sends Arnau Tenas the wrong way, and France’s dream of gold is alive. We’ll now have 30 minutes of extra time.

John Westerby: There was drama in the race for the bronze medal in the men’s individual sprint, as Jack Carlin flirted with disqualification. With the match tied one leg each, Carlin and Jeffrey Hoogland, of Netherlands, were engaged in a slow-motion game of cat-and-mouse on the first lap of the deciding leg, when Carlin inadvertently turned his wheel straight into Hoogland’s path. The race was stopped, the stewards deliberated, and Carlin was allowed to continue. He had already been given a yellow card by stewards the previous evening for his role in a pugilistic sprint against Kaiya Ota, of Japan.

When the race was restarted, Carlin led from the front and dramatically held off Hoogland’s final sprint. Hoogland, clearly, was disgusted by the fact that Carlin had been allowed to continue, but the British rider had emulated the bronze medal he achieved in this event in Tokyo.

Despite two difficult handovers, Great Britain have won silver in the women’s 4x100m relay after a storming final leg from Darryl Neita. The United States take the gold.

James Gheerbrant: It’s been a remarkable first half in the men’s football gold-medal match between France and Spain — and not all that dissimilar to the Euros semi-final these two countries contested last month.

France scored after 11 minutes when Arnau Tenas, the Spain goalkeeper, fumbled Enzo Millot’s shot into the net, but Spain then stunned France with three goals in the space of 10 minutes. Fermín López got the first two, sweeping past Guillaume Restes first time then snaffling a rebound after Restes saved from Abel Ruíz, then Álex Baena curled a lovely free kick into the top corner. What can Thierry Henry do to rally his team at half-time?

John Westerby: A brilliant final sprint earned a silver medal for Elinor Barker and Neah Evans in the Madison. Going into the final sprint, they were in third place, being pushed hard by United States, but one final effort from Barker earned them the points that lifted them above Netherlands into second place. This was a second medal of the Games for Barker, who won bronze in the team pursuit, adding to the silver she won in Tokyo (with Evans also part of the squad) and the gold in Rio in the team pursuit.

Barker was greeted trackside after she dismounted by Nico, her two-year-old son. In Tokyo, she had discovered shortly after competing that she was pregnant.

This was one of the events in which Katie Archibald would have competed had she not been ruled out by injury last month — she won gold with Laura Kenny in Tokyo — so a medal for Team GB is extremely welcome.

Jack Carlin has made a good start in the bronze medal sprint race. The British cyclist beat Jeffrey Hoogland, of the Netherlands, in the first race and needs one more win to secure bronze.

Matt Lawton: From the empty venues to the broken dreams, the impact of Covid on the last Olympics Games was seismic.

Some athletes, like British skeet shooter Amber Rutter, were unable to even board the team plane to Tokyo after testing positive for coronavirus prior to their scheduled departure. Sam Kendricks, the American world champion in pole vault, made it as far as Japan only to then fail a Covid test that prevented him from competing. He was one of many to suffer that fate.

Understandably, the regulation designed to protect the Olympic bubble was extremely strict.

Journalists had to submit daily saliva tests before they were freed from a three-day quarantine period that held them within the boundaries of selected media hotels, bar a daily 15-minute window to buy food and drink.

As the first Times reporter on the ground, and therefore the first out of quarantine, it became my job to collect bags of spit from my colleagues and deliver them to the testing facility at the main press centre. It was not what you would call a career highlight, either for them or for me.

While the delivery of the delayed 2020 Games was a victory for human resilience, it should also make those here in Paris appreciate just how special it is to have such passionate crowds.

Covid, however, does remain a problem, affecting this Games less acutely but still having a devastating impact for some. It almost certainly cost Adam Peaty a third consecutive gold medal in the men’s 100m breaststroke and denied Noah Lyles the opportunity to emulate Usain Bolt by following his success in the 100m with victory over the longer sprint distance. Other athletes from various sports and nationals have also suffered.

There are no official figures, and no mandatory rules either, with teams and their medical staff left to decide for themselves how they best keep their athletes healthy.

But sources suggest Covid is rife in the Olympic village, with athletes and support staff forced to become increasingly vigilant in a bid to avoid the invisible threat to their sporting ambitions. The moment Lyles tested positive, he moved to a hotel in order to protect his team-mates.

Jacob Ingebrigtsen was among the first to emerge in an media interview area wearing a mask. Asked why by a British journalist, the Norwegian middle distance delivered a typically blunt response. “Because you’re sick,” he said, much to the amusement of the other reporters present.

One British Olympic gold medallist thought seriously about staying in an Airbnb, while others have taken measures not that different to what they encountered in Tokyo.

With teams conscious of the fact that there is not a great deal of air circulation in the velodrome, the Dutch and New Zealand teams are constantly wearing masks. “We also test every morning,” said one of the track cycling coaches.

Thankfully, at least, Rutter and Kendricks have not been among the victims this time. After the crushing disappointment of Tokyo, they leave Paris with a silver medal apiece.

Tom Kershaw: Yasmin Harper has fallen just short of a medal in a highly-competitive women’s 3m springboard final, finishing fifth. The 24-year-old took bronze in the 3m synchro alongside Scarlett Mew Jensen, but the Chinese divers have been formidable at these Games. Chen Yiwen surged to individual gold by more than 30 points, although Australia’s Maddison Keeney will be delighted at beating Chang Yani to silver. Grace Reid finished tenth after a disappointing second dive that ended her medal hopes early on.

John Westerby: There will be no gold medal race for Jack Carlin, who was soundly beaten 2-0 by Harrie Lavreysen of the Netherlands. Carlin’s best hope now is a repeat of the bronze medal he won in this event in Tokyo. Leading out in the second leg, he attempted to disconcert Lavreysen tactically by moving him up and down the track, but the Dutch rider’s superior speed told in the end.

In Japan, Lavreysen beat his fellow Dutch rider Jeffrey Hoogland, to win gold, but Netherlands’ hegemony was disrupted when Hoogland lost his semi-final to Matthew Richardson, the Commonwealth champion who was born in Maidstone, but moved to Perth when he was nine and competes for Australia. Carlin will race Hoogland for bronze this evening.

John Westerby: The velodrome in St Quentin-en-Yvelines is once again demonstrating its capacity for producing quick times. In the flying lap qualification for the women’s sprint – so-called because the riders have a couple of laps’ warm-up before being timed over the final 200m – Ellesse Andrews, of New Zealand, broke the world record, which she held for a matter of minutes, and ended up finishing third. Her time of 10.108sec was bettered by Emma Finucane, of Great Britain, who finished second, and Lea Friedrich, whose record is 10.029sec.

Conditions in the velodrome are warm, at around 30 degrees, and the track here is wider than most, allowing the riders to use the bankings more than usual. Sophie Capewell, Finucane’s team-mate, qualified in fourth place.

There was disappointment for Jack Carlin in the first leg of his attempt to unseat the defending Olympic champion, Harrie Lavreysen, in the men’s individual sprint. Carlin left himself with a little too much ground to make up against the dominant Lavreysen and must win the second leg to stay in the hunt for a place in the final.

James Gheerbrant: Noah Williams made it safely through to the semi-finals of the men’s 10m platform individual as he qualified in eighth from the preliminary round. Williams, who won a silver medal with Tom Daley in the 10m synchronised last week, will next dive on Saturday morning, with the top 12 qualifying from the semis to the final in the afternoon.

Williams, 24, who finished fourth in the 2023 World Championships, was a little disappointed with his performance. “My first three dives were very not good,” he said. “It was hard to get into the mood of competition.”

Williams said he had found it challenging to mentally reset after the high of winning an Olympic medal. “I genuinely achieved, not my life goal, but a dream of mine, to medal at the Olympics,” he said. “I went home and I didn’t really have any motivation coming into this one, because I’ve done what I wanted to do. In 10 years I can look back and [say], ‘I medalled at the Paris Olympics.’ So yeah, it was really hard to get that motivation back.”

John Westerby: No rest in the velodrome for Emma Finucane, who is competing in the early rounds of the individual sprint after winning bronze in the keirin last night, her second medal after a gold in the team sprint. If she reaches the final of the sprint on Sunday, she will have competed in six of the seven days of competition in the velodrome. Some task for a 21-year-old at her first Olympics.

There had been talk of her potential to win three golds; what can never be measured, for all the meticulous preparation for which British Cycling is famed, is the emotional toll that such a run of days in the spotlight can take. She will ride the flying 200m in qualifying for the sprint shortly, along with Sophie Capewell, her team-mate from the team sprint.

Then Jack Carlin, the leading British men’s sprinter, races the first of three legs in his semi-final against Harrie Lavreysen, the defending champion, who has dominated this event in recent years. Can Carlin spring an upset?

Tom Kershaw: It’s gold for Toby Roberts! The 19-year-old produced an extraordinary lead climb, falling only a few holds short, to earn a huge score of 92.1 points.

That left Roberts on a total of 155.2 and all he could do was wait and watch to see if Japan’s Sorato Anraku could surpass him. The 17-year-old had been the rising star of climbing, but he lost his grip just as he reached the trickiest part of the wall. After he tumbled, Roberts cradled his head in his hands in complete disbelief. The Surrey-born teenager is the new Olympic champion and the crowd at Le Bourget are chanting his name.

Matt Lawton: So this is how things stand going into the final discipline of the heptathlon; the 800m run.

Nafi Thiam is now 121 points clear of Katarina Johnson-Thompson, having thrown 54.04m in the javelin. That equates to an advantage of 8.9secs. Their personal bests are 6.16secs apart, so it promises to be a fascinating finale in the battle for gold.

The smart money says Thiam will be celebrating a third consecutive Olympic gold, but there have been so many tales of the unexpected here in Paris. The gun goes at 7.25pm, UK time.

Craig Lord: Daniel Wiffen, the Irish swimmer, has announced his retirement from open water swimming after competing in one race. Wiffen, who had never raced a marathon or any open water competition in his life before but landed a spot in the event under continental allocations for Paris, announced his “immediate retirement from the marathon” immediately after the race.

Proud to have competed in his first “contact sport”, Wiffen, in 18th on 1hr and 57 min, said: “That’s the worst and the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. The reason why it was the worst is because it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever done, but the best because I’m happy to say that I’m an Olympic open water swimmer … and a contact sports athlete now as well.”

Talking through the pain, he said: “I’d say the start was pretty bad when I got punched in the face. I then got hit in the head three times. Somebody kicked me in the stomach and I think I pulled my groin halfway through the race. On the last lap I was just absolutely dead. That was the worst I’ve ever felt.”

Irish eyes were smiling, however, Jon Rudd, the Ireland performance director summing up with this: “Find me a guy that’s never done something before, over a distance he’s never done before, in an environment that he’s never been in before & still claims 18th in the world. I’ve found the guy. A standing ovation for Dan Wiffen!”

Tom Kershaw: The wonderfully nicknamed Toby “Terminator” Roberts is in bronze medal position after the bouldering portion of the men’s sport climbing combined final with 63.1 points after competing two of his four routes. Hamish McArthur is in fourth but is 10 points further behind Japan’s Sorato Anraku, who is the leader on 69.3 points and might prove hard to topple – the 17-year-old led the standings in qualifying.

There is a great atmosphere at the Le Bourget venue, where the crowd appreciates quite how difficult it is to navigate the impossibly small holds in bouldering. The medals will be decided by lead climbing, where the athletes have to clip their rope as they ascend the steep face. Roberts has already won a World Cup title in lead climbing earlier this year.

Craig Lord: Great Britain’s Hector Pardoe and Tobias Robinson finished sixth and 14th in the men’s 10km marathon in the Seine this morning after the last gold of the swimming at the Paris Olympics went to Hungary’s “Balaton Shark” Kristof Rasovszky. Pardoe’s result was Britain’s best in the marathon since David Davies won silver in 2008.

Having set the pace for the majority of the race, Rasovszky prevailed for victory in 1 hour 50mins 52.7sec, 2.1sec ahead of Oliver Klemet of Germany, Hungary celebrating a second medal when David Betlehem beat Italy’s Domenico Acerenza by 0.6sec in the final sprint for the line.

On the river’s conditions, which have been the source of controversy in these Games, Pardoe said: “You don’t really taste E. coli or whatever. I’m not a connoisseur for that. It was all right. The water quality felt fine.”

Robinson added: “I wish the UK could clean up the Thames like the French have cleaned up the Seine. Imagine what it would be like if we could have more open water swimming in The Thames and other waterways. It would help inspire the next wave of young swimmers to take up open water.”

James Gheerbrant: It looks like Noah Williams and Kyle Kothari are going to advance to the 10m platform semi-finals with no real alarms. With only one round to go in the preliminary, they’re in eighth and ninth position: the top 18 go through. China’s Cao Yuan leads, but Canada’s Rylan Wiens is right on his heels after a superb dive earned him 9s from the judges.

Matt Lawton: Katarina Johnson-Thompson remains very much in the battle for heptathlon gold after a superb final throw of 45.49m in the javelin; just shy of her best. Once again in this contest, she saved her best until last.

But another medal chance has evaporated for Team GB in the men’s 800m, with Ben Pattison running poorly in the opening semi-final heat.

The World Championship bronze medallist from last year clocked an outstanding new personal best of 1min 42.27sec earlier this season. But Pattison lacked his usual strong finish and slowed to fourth here, with his time of 1min 45.57sec not quick enough for one of the two fastest loser places for the final. Elliot Giles is also out after finishing fifth in the second semi-final.

But Max Burgin did progress to his first Olympic final, clocking a personal best of 1min 43.50sec and finishing third in the final semi-final and snatching one of those fastest loser spots. A super run from the 22-year-old.

James Gheerbrant: After three rounds, Kyle Kothari and Noah Williams sit in seventh and eighth place respectively, They’ve each had two good dives and one less good one, but at the moment they’re in a very strong position to make it into the 18-man semi-final.

It’s been a dramatic preliminary though: at halfway, Ukraine’s Oleksey Sereda leads, with the Chinese divers Cao Yuan and Yang Hao, unthinkably, in fourth and 13th – Yang was penalised by the judges for pulling out of an armstand. Still, they’re both in qualifying positions, and scores are not carried forward. We’ve just seen Austria’s Anton Knoll get 2s across the board for a reverse 3½ somersaults which ended with a splat. Ouch.

Rick Broadbent: That’s a bit disappointing for Katarina Johnson-Thompson but it could have been a lot worse. After messing up her first long jump, she rescues herself with 6.40m on her last attempt. It’s not great for her but means she loses only three points to Nafi Thiam and leads by 45 with the javelin and 800m to go.

She will expect to lose at least 100 points on the javelin which would leave her needing to run the 800m of her life tonight. It is still in the balance although tipping slightly towards the Belgian who is looking for a third Olympic gold. KJT is now 104 points clear of bronze medal position and 150 clear of fourth.

Matt Lawton: Significantly, the other main contender for the medals had a poor competition in the fifth discipline. America’s Anna Hall could manage only 5.93 and dropped to sixth with only the javelin and the 800m to go. Johnson-Thompson leads with 5030 points, with Thiam on 4985. The Belgian is a fine javelin thrower, but Johnson-Thompson certainly looks on course for a medal here.

James Gheerbrant: Great Britain’s Kyle Kothari has just absolutely nailed his first dive in the 10m platform preliminary. He receives 8s across the board for his impressive armstand back double somersault 1½ twists, and that puts him sixth after one round. Noah Williams is 10th. The top 18 go through to the semi-final, and then the top 12 to the final. We’ll see them each perform six dives in the preliminary this morning.

Tom Kershaw: The men’s combined sport climbing final gets under way shortly in Le Bourget. The eight finalists will start with bouldering at 9.15am BST and then move on to the lead portion of the event at 11.35am. Team GB’s Hamish McArthur was delighted to squeeze through the semi-finals, but Toby Roberts qualified in second and has high medal hopes.

The 19-year-old from Surrey, nicknamed “The Terminator”, won bouldering, lead, and combined World Cup titles last year. Less enjoyable was the first pint of beer he tried afterwards to celebrate. “It was pretty disappointing,” he said. “It didn’t leave me wanting another one.”

The Olympics has been a massive festival of sport spanning one of the most storied cities on Earth, and can elevate athletes to iconic status. Take a look at Tom Pidcock or Alex Yee for Great Britain, or Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone for the US. But what about the less popular, more unseen sports?

James Gheerbrant journeyed around Paris searching for the sports we tend to overlook, but are enjoyed with equal fervour by countries who find Olympic success in them.

Among Friday’s events in Paris is breaking, the only sport making its debut at these Games. Born on the streets of the Bronx, read how this once underground dance style made its way to the biggest stage of all.