Paris 2024 Olympics day 12: women’s golf begins, diving, canoe sprint and more – live | Paris Olympic Games 2024

In other good news for Australia, 14-year-old Alyssa True lived up to the gold medal expectations.

The Australian came into the Olympics in good form, having won qualifying matches in Shanghai and Budapest, but looked a little shaky in the early qualifying rounds on Tuesday, finishing sixth out of eight. The pressure mounted when True stumbled on her first run, falling to the ground after a big opening 540 followed by a Madonna. Hiraki’s excellent first run earned her 91.98 points and made the most of her chances.

In her second run, True showed the poise that had many considering her the pre-tournament favorite: She again started with a big score of 540 and then remained steady to finish with a score of 90.11, which was enough to propel True into medal contention, and by the end of the competitors’ second runs, the Australian was ranked third.

It all depended on that final run, and True made no secret of it: “The third run, I just knew I had to land it no matter what,” she said afterwards. “I had to land this run.”

But Australia’s track cycling team has been through a few Olympics in the wilderness and is ready to make a name for itself.

Australia are no longer underdogs. Over two nights of racing at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome, that all changed. On Monday, the Australian team of Oliver Bredin, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien stunned the field by setting the fastest time in the heats with a time of 3:42.958, just one second off the world record. Just 24 hours later, Australia faced Italy in the first round and the team not only set a new world record, but also broke the previous one, finishing in a time of 3:40.730.

It has been five years since Australia was world champion in the men’s team pursuit, and 20 years since Australia last won Olympic gold in the event, at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

The Dutch, and especially Harry Lavrijsen, are very fast on the velodrome.

In a one-sided final, British sprint trio Jack Carlin, Hamish Turnbull and Ed Rowe were brave but helpless, while Lavraisen and teammates Jeffrey Hoogland and Roy van den Berg led almost from the first corner.

Carlin, Turnbull and Rowe could only look on as Lavreysen and her two teammates raised their arms in celebration as the Dutchman, who had already broken the world record earlier in the competition, set a world record time of 40.949 seconds.

In a tournament where Armand Duplantis turned the pole vault into performance art, Simone Biles did her Simone Biles thing and Novak Djokovic perfected his tennis, it’s easy to overlook the achievements of Cuban wrestler Mijain Lopez, but his five consecutive gold medals set a new standard for endurance.

Finally, left alone in the wrestling ring as his name rang out from the stands, Mijain Lopez untied his boots, raised them to his mouth and then placed them in the center of the mat, finishing his sixth Olympics as perhaps the greatest Olympian of all time.

Just two weeks before his 42nd birthday, Lopez won an unprecedented five consecutive Greco-Roman wrestling titles, something no other Olympian has ever accomplished, and he did it with ease on a balmy evening on the Champ de Mars in Paris.

Despite the controversy surrounding his participation, Imane Kherif remains on track to win boxing gold.

There’s still one round left in Imane Kherif’s extraordinary Olympics. At a frenzied, passionate and increasingly unhinged Roland Garros, the Algerian fifth seed outshone Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng to win the women’s 66 kg semifinal and set up a meeting with China’s Yang Liu in Friday’s final.

It was a surprising turn of events in many ways, but here it was mainly because of the febrile Algerian atmosphere: Hours before the start of the evening round of Olympic boxing, Algerian flags and football shirts were piled high outside Roland Garros, and Centre Court, which had been transformed into a breathtaking boxing area, was decked out in red and green as well.

Our look back at yesterday’s action begins with the thrilling men’s 1500m final, in which Cole Hocker turned the Kerr vs. Ingebrigten saga on its head.

Perhaps there is a lesson here for us all: the power and fallacy of stories. After all, this is the most competitive and volatile event, one that depends not just on speed and perseverance, but also luck, tactics and, at times, blind opportunism.

An hour later, Hocker stepped up to the podium to accept his gold medal. He didn’t look surprised or overwhelmed. He looked like the right person to be there. After all, he was the one who had the vision all along.

We will open earlier than usual today at 7:30 because the winner will take about 3 hours. Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay It’s a no-brainer, but it’s best to get all the hard work on the tarmac done before the midday sun turns the event from grueling to dangerous.

From 9:00 AM Women’s Golf and Taekwondofollowed by Canoe Sprint and handball 9:30 AM.

From 10am onwards, there’ll be more action than swinging a Sinty stick. Of course, Sinty is not an Olympic sport, although its close relative, hurling, was played as a demonstration sport at the 1904 St. Louis Games.

Here are the best images from yesterday. Don’t dwell on the underwater shots of the French artistic swimming team, I’ve warned you.

For all you fans of medals per capita charts, I don’t have any fancy graphs to show you, but I can tell you that two small Caribbean islands, Dominica and St. Lucia, come out on top with their performance in athletics.

Among the countries with multiple medals from a range of athletes, the standouts are New Zealand (with more sure to come as the canoe sprint begins), Ireland (watch out for Daniel Wiffen) and perennial winner Australia.

It took longer than expected, but the USA managed to take China’s place on the medal tally. Behind them, Australia won another gold medal yesterday and remains at the front of the pack.

So far, athletes from 48 countries have sung their national anthems, and a total of 76 NOCs have won medals.

Preface – Schedule for Day 12