Paris 2024 Olympics day six: golf, rowing, tennis, gymnastics and more – live
Hello everybody and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the sixth official day of competition at this Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
Day five was filled to the gills with thrills, spills, tears and cheers. Host nation France are celebrating Léon Marchand’s extraordinary double-gold performance last night in the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke – two triumphs hours apart that gave the 22-year-old from Toulouse his third individual gold at these Games. That dull roar hanging in this morning’s air is the echo of 15,000 French roaring as Marchand hauled in hot-favourite, Hungary’s world record holder Kristóf Milák, with inches to spare.
Team Great Britain are also exultant after a glorious day five highlighted by the gold medal-winning feats of Lola Anderson, Hannah Scott, Lauren Henry and Georgie Brayshaw in the women’s quadruple sculls crew and Alex Yee in the men’s triathlon, who pulled off a home-straight heist worthy of France favourite gentleman burglar Arsène Lupin himself. It vaults Team GB into fifth on the medal table behind China, Japan, France and Australia. Despite Katie Ledecky winning her eighth Olympic gold medal in the 1500m freestyle and tying the record for the most gold medals by a US woman, Team USA are a surprising seventh, but keeping their powder dry.
For Australia, dizzy highs – Jess Fox clinching her second gold of the Games with victory in the canoe slalom course at Vaires-sur-Marne – came with desultory lows, as the Matildas’ Olympic tilt ended in tears after losing 2-1 to the USA in their final pool game. Despite being without star striker Sam Kerr, the “Tillies” arrived in Paris as genuine medal contenders after capturing hearts with a fourth-place finish at the 2023 World Cup. Instead, they’re heading home early after the controversy-riven Canadians then delivered a coup de grace to the girls in gold by upsetting Colombia to progress.
It set Canada-Australia relations back another notch after the Maple Leafers beat the Boomers in the basketball and upset Australia’s world champion rugby sevens side in the semi-final to send them home without a medal. A Bryan Adams-ban on Sydney radio is currently being enforced by way of revenge.
Day five’s most anticipated – and controversial – moment came when Paris “reversed the tide of history” and declared the River Seine waters fit to host the men’s triathlon. Regardless of whether competitors copped a dose of E.coli with their broccoli, the event was a spectacle that never seemed quite possible until it was actually under way. Heavy rain, hysterical headlines and Netflix programming certainly didn’t help.
Day six promises even more blood, sweat, tears and glory…