After a day in which the pool turned green, Michael Phelps turned even more gold, and Simone Biles turned sideways, upside-down and virtually inside-out, what will day five bring?
The big picture
The insuperable Phelps took his 20th and 21st Olympic gold medals as those late-night swimming bouts continued to go his way. Teammate Katie Ledecky strolled off with her second gold of the Games, and the US women caused gasps (of the wow kind, not the surprised kind) taking top spot in the team gymnastics final. All of which kept Team USA in the medal table top spot, a stretch ahead of China, whose synchronised diving pair of Chen Ruolin and Liu Huixia nabbed a gold in the jade-hued pool.
Team GB waited all day for a medal and then, wouldn’t you know it: two came along in quick succession and in the dead of (BST) night as well. It was silver for Siobhan-Marie O’Connor in the women’s 200m individual medley, and for Stephen Milne, Duncan Scott, Dan Wallace and James Guy in the men’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay.
Hungary has leapfrogged Australia into third place in the medal table, thanks to Katinka Hosszú, who holds 50% of her country’s medal haul.
And spare a thought for journalists covering the Rio Games (and not a “jammy bastards” thought): on Tuesday night a bus carrying reporters to the Olympic park was attacked – whether by bullets or stones is unclear – leaving three people with minor injuries.
You should also know:
- Syrian refugee Rami Anis records personal best in 100m freestyle heats.
- Japan rock the old order again as Olympic rugby sevens takes hold.
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China falls in love with swimmer Fu Yuanhui and her ‘mystic energy’.
- Trail-blazer Zahra Nemati wins hearts and minds with stirring effort in archery.
Picture of the day
It’s Simone Biles. Every day it could be Simone Biles.
Diary
All times are local: add four hours for UK, add 13 hours for eastern Australia; subtract one hour for east-coast US and four for west coast. See the full timetable for your timezone here. Here’s a smattering of the highlights:
- Rowing in the morning, with golds to come in the men’s quadruple sculls at 10.10am – Australian and Team GB fours feature here – and the women’s at 10.34am.
- Team GB gold hopes centre on Chris Froome in the men’s individual road cycling time trial: that’s at 10am. The women’s event comes at 8.30am.
- No medals today, but in the equestrian field, the team and individual dressage gets going at 10am.
- Also not a final but some men’s rugby sevens to monitor: South Africa v Australia at 11.30am, New Zealand v GB at 12.30pm and Fiji v USA at 1.30pm, among others.
- The hockey pool matches continue: women first with India v Australia at 11am, GB v Argentina at 1.30, and USA v Japan at 5pm. Team GB’s men take on Australia at 8.30pm.
- At 12 noon it’s the first of two shooting finals, with the 50m men’s pistol, followed at 3.45pm by the men’s double trap.
- In the canoe slalom, the men’s kayak (K1) final is at 3.15pm.
- Two weightlifting finals: the women’s 69kg at 3.30pm (watch out for Team GB’s Rebekah Tiler) and the men’s 77kg at 7pm.
- At 4pm, the men’s gymnastics individual all-around final springs into action. Max Whitlock is Team GB’s best chance, but Japan’s Kohei Uchimura is the gymnast to beat.
- There’s also diving at 4pm in the men’s synchronised 3m springboard final; Team GB’s world bronze medallists Jack Laugher and Chris Mears step up.
- We’ll see two new judo golds: at 5pm in the women’s -70kg and 5.20pm in the men’s -90 kg.
- Two fencing finals: at 8.15pm the women’s individual foil, followed by the men’s individual sabre at 8.45pm.
- We get the winner of the women’s table tennis singles at 9.30pm.
- And there’s more swimming gold: the men’s 200m breaststroke at 10.03pm; the women’s 200m butterfly at 10.54pm; the men’s 100m freestyle at 11.03pm; and the women’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay at 11.55. See the roundups below for who to cheer on.
Team GB roundup
Day four was quiet but night four was not: Siobhan-Marie O’Connor swiped an impressive swimming silver behind the mighty Katinka Hosszú of Hungary (her third Rio gold) in the women’s 200m individual medley; before the men’s team did the same in the 4x200m freestyle relay. The US won that one, obviously.
Elsewhere, the rowing was up and down, with Vicky Thornley and Katherine Grainger one of three crews to push through to the finals, and two others – the women’s lightweight double sculls and men’s lightweight four – ending their Rio run.
It was a painful last-placed finish for David Florence – a medal hopeful in the canoe slalom. France’s Denis Gargaud Chanut took gold.
Day five promises better, with Chris Froome hitting the road in the individual time trial, for one (see diary above for the full rundown).
Insomniacs will be thrilled to learn that Duncan Scott made it into the men’s 100m freestyle final and will swim at 3.03am BST in the early hours of Thursday. Andrew Willis topped his semifinal with a personal best in the men’s 200m breaststroke; that final is at the slightly less eyelid-testing UK time of 2.03am.
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Jo Konta beat Svetlana Kuznetsova to reach the last eight in the tennis singles – and Andy Murray beat Juan Mónaco in his second-round match.
- Giles Scott took his first steps out of Ben Ainslie’s sailing shadow.
Team USA roundup
So Michael Phelps did win his 20th gold medal, with a win in the men’s 200m butterfly. And then he won his 21st as the American men walked away, while in fact still swimming, with the 4x200m freestyle relay.
The also astonishing Katie Ledecky snapped up another gold in the women’s 200m freestyle, making her only the third woman to win gold in both the 200m and 400m freestyle at the same Olympics.
And that’s before you scroll back to the women’s gymnastics finals, where Team USA comprehensively ran, jumped and twisted away with the gold medal. The team – Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez and Madison Kocian – took top marks in all four disciplines and won by a margin bigger than all five of them standing on each others’ shoulders: 8.209 points.
Elsewhere on day four, a handful of unscripted errors by Hope Solo helped Colombia to a 2-2 draw with the US women’s football team, which nonetheless tops Group G to soldier on to the knockout stages. And Travis Stevens took a silver in the men’s -81kg judo.
Back in the pool for day five, Nathan Adrian will be looking forward to the final of the men’s 100m freestyle this evening, having topped the semis; he’ll be joined by Caeleb Dressel, both of them already gold winners in the 4x100m relay.
Australia team roundup
Success in the pool for Emma McKeon, who grabbed a bronze in the women’s 200m freestyle, a coup she put down to “just being tough”. But there was less of a splash from the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay team, who landed fourth; and Alicia Coutts finished fifth in the final of the women’s 200m individual medley, in what will be her last individual swim of three Olympic campaigns.
The men – Tom Fraser-Holmes, David McKeon, Daniel Smith and Mack Horton – did snag an early lead in the relay but couldn’t hold off the inevitable Phelps-led US win. Cameron McEvoy, presumed to be in need of a rest after his individual 100m freestyle semi-final earlier in the evening, was withdrawn from the team. He’ll line up alongside Kyle Chalmers for that final around noon Thursday AEST.
On dry land, there was bronze too in the equestrian eventing team competition, behind France and Germany. The Matildas cheered a 6-1 victory over Zimbabwe in the women’s football but now face a stamina-jangling quarter-final match against Brazil or the US.
And Kim Brennan and Rhys Grant in, respectively, the women’s and men’s single scull are through to the semifinals.
Underdog of the day
For the second time, this award goes to an athlete who’s put Serena Williams out of the Olympics: after the Williams sisters’ doubles defeat, on day four it was the turn of Elina Svitolina to send Serena packing in the third round of the women’s singles.
Rio is the first Olympics for the Ukrainian player, who had lost on all four previous occasions she’d faced Williams. And the world number one’s reaction? “The better player won.”
Tweet of the day
Where are they now, eh?
10 years ago: A 9-year-old named Katie Ledecky gets an autograph from Michael Phelps (Credit: Ledecky Family) pic.twitter.com/oOOPns5mor
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) August 10, 2016
If today were a c19th fairytale
It would be Charles Kingsley’s the Water-Babies. Olympic swimming: where even the old ones are young.
And another thing
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