Welcome to what is the last day of sporting in this round of Olympics (we have to wait till 7 September for the Paralympics) ahead of the closing ceremony. It’s also Usain Bolt’s 30th birthday: feliz aniversário, old man. You can follow all the celebrations to the last firework on the Olympics live blog. But first: your daily catch-up.
The big picture
Celebrations, too, for Team GB, and not just for Mo Farah’s double double. That 5,000m gold took Britain to a 2012-equalling 65 medals. Bronze in the women’s 4x400m relay took them past it. Sixty-seven with a guaranteed gold or silver for Joe Joyce in today’s super-heavyweight boxing final will cement Rio as Britain’s most successful Olympics since 1908 (a rather different affair to the modern Games, although the pool turned green then too).
South Africa’s Caster Semenya won the women’s 800m in cool style, brushing aside athletics chief Sebastian Coe’s decision to choose a moment two hours before her race to repeat that the IAAF will challenge a ruling allowing her to compete without taking drugs to suppress her testosterone levels. Timing is everything.
Today’s competitors will hopefully have grabbed at least a little sleep as Rio went wild during – multiply that by 10 following – the host country’s penalty shoot-out against Germany in the men’s football final at the Maracanã. It was 1-1 at 90 minutes. It was 4-4 on penalties until Brazil goalkeeper Weverton saved one. Then it was Neymar, and it was in, and it was all over. Read Barney Ronay’s match report here.
You should also know:
- South Korea’s Inbee Park wins women’s golf gold.
- Neymar gives Brazil first Olympic football gold – in pictures.
- Tearful Ryan Lochte sorry for ‘shenanigans’ at gas station.
- And for the inspired: how to become an Olympic athlete.
Team GB roundup
Did I mention Mo? Farah’s blitzing run to 5,000m victory made him only the second man (after Finland’s Lasse Virén in 1972 and 1976; file that away for a pub quiz) to win 5,000m and 10,000m golds in successive Games. Even in an Olympics littered with double doubles, and a triple treble, the thrill of Farah’s final kick takes some beating. “I hate to lose,” he said afterwards. How would he know?
Farah’s was the medal that took Team GB to a 2012-matching 65, but golds from Nicola Adams in the women’s flyweight boxing (a crown-retaining double for her, too) and Liam Heath in the men’s kayak single 200m were the stepping stones.
Bronzes for Bianca Walkden in the women’s +67kg taekwondo and Vicky Holland in the women’s triathlon also gave the team a leg-up, before the women’s 4x400m relay team of Eilidh Doyle, Anyika Onuora, a lightning Emily Diamond and Christine Ohuruogu shouldered GB over the top to end the day on 66 medals.
It’ll be 67 today, with a gold or silver promised to Joe Joyce in his super-heavyweight boxing final against France’s Tony Yoka. But it’ll be a close finish in the overall medal table, with China’s 26 golds bumping up against GB’s 27. Chen Aisen’s victory from the 10m platform helped China there, after Tom Daley took too literally the basic diving principle of starting at the top and ending at the bottom: he qualified in first place for the semi-finals, finished last and had to sit out a final he’d hoped to win.
- Martin Rooney irate as 4x400m team disqualified from final.
- Charley Hull misses out on bronze in women’s golf.
Team USA roundup
Still top of the table? Check. (As in yes, not go off and find out for yourself, but that link’s a handy one for those who want all the stats.) Five more golds, then: a clean sweep of the 4x400m relays; a pencilled-in-before-the-Games win for the women’s basketball team; a “who, what, hang on” victory for Matthew Centrowitz in the men’s 1500m; and a dominant women’s triathlon performance from Gwen Jorgensen.
The day before, Allyson Felix became the first woman in track and field history to win five golds. Now she has six, with some help from Natasha Hastings, Courtney Okolo and Phyllis Francis, in a relay so controlled by the US and Jamaican teams that they were practically running a separate race to the third-place chasers. The US men didn’t have such an easy run of it, pushed surprisingly hard by Botswana in the opening legs, then by a surging Jamaica at the close. Still, it was a fifth 4x400m double for the US, a record equalled only by … oh. Nobody.
Paul Kipkemoi Chelimo won, then lost, then was re-awarded silver in the men’s 5,000m behind Mo Farah after a disqualification was overturned; Shakur Stevenson boxed for gold but settled for silver in the men’s bantamweight final.
Bronzes for the women’s volleyball team, Jackie Galloway in the +67kg taekwondo, David Boudia in the men’s 10m platform diving, and J’den Cox in the men’s freestyle 86kg wrestling kept Team USA in an unassailable #1 with 116 medals, almost twice that of second-placed Britain.
There’s some men’s basketball today, too. Who’d bet against a 44th gold there?
Australia team roundup
It feels as if I’ve over-used “frustrating” in this part of the briefing. But it was another frustrating day. Medal hopes Emma Moffatt and Erin Densham ended sixth and 12th in the women’s triathlon. Modern pentathlete Max Esposito couldn’t match his sister Chloe’s gold and wound up seventh. 2012 winner Jacob Clear didn’t keep his crown in the men’s kayak four 1000m: he and paddle-mates Ken Wallace, Jordan Wood and Riley Fitzsimmons were pushed to fourth.
Ryan Gregson came home ninth in a peculiarly slow men’s 1500m field. Minjee Lee and Su-Hyun Oh faded in the women’s golf to seventh and 13th. The women’s 4x400m team came last in their final, but the young team – Jessica Thornton is still in her teens – said they’d be focusing on future victories.
Another medal-less day meant attention instead focused on what we’re apparently calling the “naughty nine”, although we’re definitely talking sub-Lochte levels of naughtiness. The nine athletes were accused of tampering with their official accreditation to grab seats for the Boomers’ – ultimately unsuccessful – bid to make it to the men’s basketball final, and have been fined AU$47,000.
Chef de mission Kitty Chiller said the group – cyclists Ashlee Ankudinoff and Melissa Hoskins, rugby sevens player Ed Jenkins, archers Alec Potts and Ryan Tyack, rowers Olympia Aldersey, Fiona Albert and Lucy Stephens, and hockey player Simon Orchard – were not at fault:
It’s unfortunately a practice that has been traditional not only in Australia but other countries as well for many Olympic Games, putting a sticker on your accreditation with another venue access code on it.
Stickers don’t seem an enormously hi-tech security measure. Perhaps that’s another thing to work on for Tokyo 2020.
Picture of the day
Neymar plus fans. No sign of the selfie from the other side on his Instagram account yet, but perhaps he’s busy.
Diary
All times below are local to Rio: here’s the full timetable tweaked for wherever you are. Or add four hours for UK, add 13 hours for eastern Australia; subtract one hour for east-coast US and four for west coast. And remember: this is the last time you have to do this (till the Paralympics start).
- The men’s marathon closes down the athletics: that starts at 9.30am.
- Rhythmic gymnastics all-arounds things off with the team final at 11.50am. Scoffers check here.
- Cycling is still going, with the men’s cross-country mountain bike gold to be won at 12.30pm.
- It’s the gold bout between Italy and Brazil in the men’s volleyball final at 1.15pm. The US play Russia for bronze at 9.30am.
- The men’s handball final is Denmark v France at 2pm. Poland and Germany scrap for third place at 10.30am.
- Boxing has four finals to dispense with: the women’s middleweight at 2pm (America’s Claressa Shields v Nouchka Fontijn of the Netherlands); the men’s flyweight at 2.15pm; the men’s light welterweight at 3pm; and the men’s super heavyweight – and GB’s final medal – at 3.15pm, when Joe Joyce takes on France’s Tony Yoka.
- There are two wrestling golds left: in the men’s freestyle 65kg and 97kg.
- The big sporting finale is the men’s basketball, which has Serbia up against ultimate favourites Team USA at 3.45pm; Australia will battle for bronze against Spain at 11.30am.
- And it’s lights out with the closing ceremony from 8pm.
Underdog of the day
She’s a three-time European high jump champion, but Ruth Beitia gambolled up to the bar knowing that Spain had never won an Olympic medal in women’s athletics. Nor has anyone as old as her – she’s 37, it’s a cruel world – ever won an Olympics jumping event. But she cleared 1.97m for gold, putting it down to “26 years of work and pulling hair out”, which not many of her rivals can claim. Not silver-medallist Mirela Demireva (aged 26), anyway.
Tweet of the day
Gold-winning Big Star – well, his rider, Britain’s Nick Skelton, is the one with the medal, for showjumping – is on his way back from Rio. Hoping those shipping containers are kitted out with some luxury hay.
Big Star is off home! #TwoHearts #Equestrian #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/2WuGAiveyH
— The FEI (@FEI_Global) August 21, 2016
If today were an actor
It would be Farah’s Four-set. I’m sorry. It’s been a long Olympics.
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