Silver medals for Matthew Richardson at the velodrome and Maddison Keeney in the diving pool headlined the day in Paris, while canoe sprinters Tom Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen added a bronze in the water for a total of 48 medals won by the end of day 14. If you come at the king, you better not miss, to paraphrase a line from a popular TV show. Matthew Richardson sensed he had a shot after some strong performances in qualifying for the men’s sprint, but when he swung at Harrie Lavreysen in the final, he narrowly missed the Dutch cycling great, who retained his Olympic title.
Silver for Richardson was his second medal of these Games, adding to the team sprint bronze medal he won earlier in the week. An incredible, near perfect dive – the best of any of the competitors in the women’s 3m springboard final – was enough to win a silver medal for Maddison Keeney at the Olympic Aquatics Centre. The forward two-and-a-half somersaults with two twists dive had a high degree of difficulty but Keeney nailed it on her last dive and was rewarded with a score of 78.
20 points – and her second Olympic medal, after she won bronze in Rio eight years ago. Having broken the world record over 500m in the semi-final of the men’s K-2 canoe sprint, Australian pair Tom Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen headed into Friday’s medal race as hot medal hopes. Alas, they could not reproduce their form of 24 hours earlier in the face of a blistering pace set by eventual winners Germany.
The Australians had a hold on silver for much of the race but ultimately crossed the line in third with a bronze medal, behind Hungary. The Opals will play for a bronze medal at the Paris Games after they couldn’t produce what would have been a seismic upset of the all-conquering USA in the women’s basketball semi-final at Bercy. After largely staying in touch with the WNBA-laden American team during the first quarter, their relentless opponents chipped away before bursting ahead in the third, and the final score of 85-64 represented a blow-out.
The Opals will meet France or Belgium on Sunday in their final game of these Games. With the Eiffel Tower looming large over them and under beautiful orange skies, the sun set on the Olympic medal hopes of Australian pair Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar as they fell to a comprehensive straight-set defeat to Tanja Hueberli and Nina Brunner. The Swiss duo snaffled the bronze medal with a 21-17, 21-15 win as Clancy and Artacho del Solar were unable to add to their Tokyo silver.
If there’s a football title to be won, it’s a good bet that Spain will win it at the moment, given their astonishing recent success across the men’s and women’s international game. Their latest victory, a rip-roaring eight-goal extra-time thriller in the gold medal match, broke home hearts at Parc des Princes as Thierry Henry’s side fell at the final hurdle. From golds-first tallies to the ‘medals per capita’ argument, how we rank nations can be a contest in itself.
Now there’s a new method – and its creators say it’s fairest of all. The executive director of the closing ceremony at the Olympic Games has admitted that he had to revise the script “for the umpteenth time” after a backlash against the opening event on the Seine. There has been an outpouring of national pride in St Vincent and the Grenadines after Shafiqua Maloney made the women’s 800m final – inspiring future generations back at her climate-battered island home.
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