Women’s rugby sevens is enjoying its moment in the spotlight, as Jack Snape reports.

The 66,000 who packed the stadium on Sunday set a new attendance record for women’s rugby, beating the previous one of 58,498 at Twickenham for England v France last year. A similar number returned on Monday. The same is expected for Tuesday’s medal matches, the stands full just as they were for Antoine Dupont’s crowning glory in the men’s sevens days earlier. And they were almost as loud on Monday night, bouncing around the ground in northern Paris but unable to will their side over the line in a surprise 19-14 quarter-final loss to Canada.

One of the most emotional moments of the Games so far arrived yesterday in the fencing when Olha Kharlan won bronze for Ukraine. It was the 33-year-old’s fifth Olympic medal (a list topped by gold at Beijing 2008) but none of the previous four carried such weight.

Kharlan shot to international attention at the 2023 World Fencing Championships when she was disqualified for not shaking hands with her Russian opponent, Anna Smirnova. Her ejection had made qualification for Paris by the standard route virtually impossible but she was handed a lifeline following an intervention from the IOC president Thomas Bach, a former fencer.

Nick Ames has been close to the story throughout and reported on Kharlan’s success from the Grand Palais.

This was for Ukraine. It was for the people back home where every victory, of whatever kind, is laden with meaning few outside can understand. It was for those who have lost their lives while fighting to ensure the country’s athletes remain free to compete. It was for Olha Kharlan’s family in Mykolaiv, where her parents spent months living in their basement under continued Russian attack. And it was for the show of principle that almost denied her the chance to experience this at all.

Earlier today I pointed you in the direction of a gallery of the best images from day three including the incredible shot of a levitating Gabriel Medina. Here’s how the shot came together, featuring the photographer Jérôme Brouillet.

“I’m sort of with you on the skating,” emails Jakob Mathiszig-Lee in response to my curmudgeonly post, “but that said I really enjoyed watching the final yesterday, as did my 3 year old.

“I think one of the issues with it is what makes tricks difficult is sometimes extremely difficult to pick up quickly to a casual viewer and a lot of them look extremely similar in real time. That said the commentary team yesterday did a great job of explaining why a trick deserved a high score during the replays and I was completely gripped by the best trick session in the end.”

Thanks Jakob, and I’m pleased you and your three-year-old were absorbed by the action. Ultimately that is the point of the inclusion of events like this, to broaden the appeal of the Games and steer it away from its militaristic Victorian origins. If the occasional innovation doesn’t capture every passing viewer, that’s fine.

I am considerably more excited by the prospect of breaking – as a spectacle. I’m unconvinced how it will play out as sport.

Rhona Rose has emailed in to ask if we can produce a per-capita medal table that takes into account population size. I shall pass that onto the data visualisation geniuses, but a quick squiz would single out Hong Kong as massive overachievers at this early stage, with Kazakhstan, Belgium, Mongolia, and Moldova among the other notable medal-winners.

It’s not been a record breaking few days in the pool but the racing has been spectacular with nail-biting finishes and hyped duels living up to the billing. One such was the women’s 200m freestyle clash between Australian training partners Ariarne Titmus and Mollie O’Callaghan.

Standing atop the podium with a gold medal around her neck, O’Callaghan invited Titmus to join her. The pair stood together, arms around each other, as they sang Advance Australia Fair. Not one but two Australians elevated on the dais – recognition of Titmus’s role in inspiring O’Callaghan to greatness, and of Titmus’s own heroics. Short of the pair touching in a dead-heat and sharing gold, it was perhaps the most fitting way for this gladiatorial battle to end.

Following in the footsteps of their male counterparts, the US women’s basketball team began their Olympic campaign looking like a team with a point to prove. The Americans now have a 56-game Olympic winning streak that dates to the 1992 Barcelona Games. It means 42-year-old Diana Taurasi is on track for a sixth consecutive gold medal.

Watching Tom Pidcock deal with a flat tyre and win the cross-country cycling was much easier to enjoy.

It was a ride of pure, thrilling instinct: a welcome reminder that in the chaos of competitive cross-country biking, sometimes the best plan is no plan at all. And Pidcock, who has won on the snow-flecked peaks of Alpe d’Huez and the dandruff-white roads of Strade Bianche and now the verdant woodland of Paris, is in many ways a cyclist of the romantic imagination, of a time before strategies and specialisation and four‑year plans, when the essence of the sport was simply to get on your bike and thrash the hell out of it.

Specialisation will surely come for Pidcock too in the end. With a second gold safely in the bag, and with his peak years approaching, all the incentives seem to point towards a proper tilt at the Tour with Ineos Grenadiers, the laborious process of chiselling and sanding himself down into a pure mountain machine. But here, amid the tree stumps and the dirt, is where his bold and breathtaking range of skills finds its most vivid and spectacular expression.

I’m going to level with you all, I don’t get skateboarding, especially the street event. Compared to the other youth-focussed modern inclusions (like BMX or climbing) the skills underwhelm me and all that concrete leaves me a little cold. I am happy to be educated, if anyone has a constructive email for me to read.

But apparently yesterday’s men’s final was as good as it gets.

In a heart-pounding 102-minute show of can-you-top-this immediately hailed as the greatest men’s street final ever staged, the trio spent the afternoon swapping medal positions before a packed crowd of about 5,000 spectators that included rapper Snoop Dogg, who had started the day watching Novak Djokovic’s win over Rafael Nadal alongside Billie Jean King at Roland-Garros. The crackling atmosphere was a far cry from the nearly empty Ariake Urban Sports Park where Horigome won his first Olympic gold three years ago.

Scroll to the bottom and enjoy Gabriel Medina levitating.

Yesterday’s success for Team GB has already entered history as magic Monday, but the day also brought news of a positive Covid result for silver medallist Adam Peaty. The absence of panic is a far cry from Tokyo three years ago but the risk of an outbreak remains a concern so early into competition.

Among the highlights of day three was a second round singles match in the men’s tennis. But it was no ordinary clash, featuring the two most successful men in the sport’s history: Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.

Djokovic is bidding for the only trophy missing from his collection with fate conspiring to deliver the Serbian just one bronze medal in a career that has spanned four previous Olympics. Dominik Koepfer (GER) should prove no obstacle in round three, but danger lurks thereafter with Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE), Alexander Zverev (GER), and Carlos Alcaraz (ESP) his next scheduled opponents.

Nadal meanwhile may have played his final singles match of note, and it was fitting that it came on centre court at Roland Garros, against an opponent with whom he has shared the most active rivalry in tennis history. “I have been suffering a lot of ­injuries the last two years,” Nadal said. “So if I feel that I am not competitive enough to keep going or physically I’m not ready to keep going, I will stop and I will let you know. But I don’t think every day about if I am retiring or not.”

With the triathlon postponed the first action of the day will once again come in badminton (8:30). Beach volleyball, handball, shooting, and volleyball all kick-off at 9:00 then rowing at 9:30, hockey, judo, and table tennis at 10:00.

Japan top the medal table on the morning of day four, thanks in no small part to their domination of skateboarding. The USA lead the medal count, but only three of their 20 visits to the podium have reached the top step.

It’s always good for a Games to see the hosts with some early momentum and everything is going to script so far for France.

The flags of 36 NOCs have now been raised in Paris, including a brace of golds for Hong Kong, a first podium finish in the pool for Ireland since Michelle Smith at Atlanta 96, and Ukraine’s first medal of the Paris Games, a bronze to fencer Olga Kharlan.

Men’s Triathlon Postponed

Preamble – Day Four Schedule

Jonathan Howcroft