Paris 2024 Olympics day three: Swimming, rowing, rugby sevens and more – live | Paris Olympic Games 2024

Men’s hockey: in Group B Australia have got under way against Ireland in each side’s second match. Australia beat Argentina in their opener, while Ireland lost to defedning champions Belgium. India will play Argentina in the same group later today. Belgium lead the standing with two victories from two matches. There are six teams in the group and the top four progress.

Men’s handball: Germany are in complete control in this match against Japan. The second half has just started and Germany lead 23-11.

If your focus is on Team GB, then in their preview of the day they have picked out Tom Daley and Noah Williams in the men’s synchronised 10m diving, Tom Pidcock defending his mountain bike cross-country title, and Ros Canter, Laura Collett and Tom McEwen showjumping for gold as their highlights to look out for on day three.

Women’s 10m air rifle: China’s Huang Yuting is leading this competition at the moment. She is 17, and already has one gold medal from the mixed team event. South Korea’s Ban Hyojin is close in second place at the moment.

Rowing: the action is under way at Vaires-sur-Marne nautical stadium again, but today’s schedule is chiefly repecharge rounds and semi-finals for the minor placings, with a rest or practice day for those with more realistic medal ambitions.

Men’s beach volleyball: Italy’s Samuele Cottafava and Paolo Nicolai have nicked the first set against Australia’s Mark Nicolaidis and Izac Carracher, 21-19. Both pairs lost their opening game, and so a second defeat would really hamper any chance of progressing from Pool A.

Men’s handball: Germany have opened up a comfortable lead against Japan early on here, 15-6 up after 18 minutes. That match is both nation’s second game in Group A. Germany won their first, Japan lost their operner.

Here is a reminder of where and when we are expecting medals today …

🥇 Shooting – men’s & women’s 10m air rifle (from 9:30)
🥇 Diving – men’s 10m platform synchro (from 11:00)
🥇 Equestrian – eventing team jumping / eventing individual jumping (from 11:00)
🥇 Mountain Bike – men’s cross-country (from 14:10)
🥇 Judo – women’s 57kg / men’s 73kg (from 16:00)
🥇 Skateboarding – men’s street (17:00)
🥇 Archery – men’s team (17:11)
🥇 Canoe Slalom – men’s C-1 (17:20)
🥇 Gymnastics – men’s team (17:30)
🥇 Swimming – men’s 200m freestyle & 100m backstroke / women’s 400m IM & 200m freestyle (20:30)
🥇 Fencing – women’s individual sabre / men’s individual foil (21:45)

*(All times listed are Paris local)

Hello, it is Martin Belam here in London. I will be here for the next few hours, but can’t help feeling very jealous of my colleague Will Magee last night getting to live blog the heroics of Andy Murray and Dan Evans. Although to be fair I might have just been typing fssghtssgdgsthppssunhelkandjkba with all the excitement. And that’s before I even think about the chaos of the Matildas.

I can’t promise the next few hours are going to be quite as high-octane as all that was, but we should get some medals again this morning, and I will keep you across everything that is happening. Drop me a line if you want to – martin.belam@theguardian.com.

With nine o’clock local time fast approaching, the badmintonists will soon be joined by exponents of beach volleyball, handball, fencing, and volleyball, with shooting, archery, and rowing following just half-an-hour afterwards.

The forecast is for a beautiful summer’s day with temperatures tipping into the early 30s.

It’s worth watching Murray in Paris. It reminds you how much the GB public owe him for giving them genuine success after almost a century of abject underperformance. If you like tennis, sport, you might agree we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Hear hear. Andy Murray is on the shortlist for all-time great British sportspeople, and he’s done it displaying extraordinary resilience. Even yesterday, facing five match points against him in what would be his final match he still somehow manages to find a way to keep going. A true inspiration.

The shuttles are flying at Porte de la Chapelle Arena, which means the action is under way on day three of the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Coming up later today we’ll be treated to the most historic early round clash in any sport at these Games when Novak Djokovic takes on Rafael Nadal in the men’s singles tennis. It will be an Open-era record 60th clash between the two most successful male tennis players of all time, with 37-year-old Djokovic leading the head-to-head over 38-year-old Nadal 30-29.

It is fitting that what could be the final match of this extraordinary rivalry will take place on centre court at Roland Garros, the site of their first meeting back in 2006.

The likes of Simone Biles and Lebron James are contributing to a euphoric vibe in Paris during these early days of the Games.

In terms of political capital from sport, the mood has not been this electric since France’s 1998 World Cup win, inspired by Zinedine Zidane, when the diverse team was hailed as able to heal and reconcile a fractured society and end discrimination. But only four years after that football victory the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, made it to the second round of the presidential election. This time, weeks before the Olympics, his daughter Marine’s far-right National Rally party was prevented from forming a government by a massive surge of tactical voting in a snap parliament election.

Every gesture at the Olympics is now being clung to in France as a means of healing the recent election’s bitter rows over dual-nationals, identity and racism.

While the star power was comparable at the Stade Pierre Mauroy, there were far fewer nerves for the imposing USA men’s basketball team. LeBron James and co swatted aside Serbia, one of their biggest rivals, in an awesome show of strength.

They are not burdened by your expectations. They are not keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they measure up against 1992. They have not been reading your angsty tweets (with the exception of KD, who almost certainly has). The result: three quarters of pure business, one quarter of pure pleasure, a potential medal rival not simply dispatched but shoved disdainfully aside, a game that was basically conceived at its outset as a series of memes.

Broadening our horizons a little now, it’s worth savouring the return to Olympic competition of Simone Biles yesterday.

Of course she nails the floor routine, lands the Yurchenko double pike on the vault, follows it up with the straight somersault with 1½ twists, sails through to the all-around final with another entry on the all-time points list. Sometimes, she wobbles a little. Sometimes, she takes an extra steadying step. Even her stumbles seem graceful. Because if Biles has taught us anything over the last decade, it is to reframe the way we think and talk about star athletes, to refuse the instinctive deification that is really also a form of dehumanisation. To stop demanding perfection and miracles as a condition of our love. Biles is perfect, because she isn’t.

Also coming up today we have the start of The Opals’ Olympic campaign, a tournament that promises to see the baton passed from the great Lauren Jackson to a new generation of Australian basketballers, like Ezi Magbegor.

The New Zealand-born forward/ centre, moved to Australia with her Nigerian parents at age six. She has long been touted as the woman to claim the mantle of Australia’s next great basketball talent after Lauren Jackson retires for good, and following the false start of Liz Cambage in green and gold.

It’s another massive night in the pool for Australia’s Dolphins with a one-two expected in 200m freestyle, but who out of Ariarne Titmus and Mollie O’Callaghan will take gold?

Titmus will go into the 200m final as the defending champion and world record-holder, having taken that mark from O’Callaghan at the Australian Olympic trials in June. She approaches the 200m with the strength of her 400m-800m training.

O’Callaghan, twice the world 100m freestyle champion, and world 200m champion last year, but competing in an individual event for the first time at the Olympics, will bring her dynamic finishing power and superb underwater skills.

The Matildas, arguably Australia’s most popular team at the Olympics, notched their first win of the Games, a madcap 6-5 victory over Zambia. Qualification to the quarter-finals now looks probable, but not yet assured. Even so, after displaying such poor form in their opening two matches progress deep into the tournament seems unlikely.

For the optimists, this remarkable comeback victory will buoy the Matildas ahead of their crunch match against the United States on Wednesday in Marseille. It is just the sort of win needed to invigorate their Olympic campaign. Next stop – an Olympic medal?

Then there is a less charitable way to assess the group stage clash on Sunday night. Zambia are ranked 64^th in the world. They have two of the best attackers in the world, yes, but as a cohesive national team, they are far from the finished product (the untenable position of their coach does not help). This is a game the Matildas, who have finished fourth at consecutive international tournaments, should have controlled and won comfortably.

We’ll stay on Australian topics for a little while, starting with a celebration of Jess Fox, Australia’s flag bearer, after she dominated the K-1 Canoe Slalom to win the first of up to three gold medals at the Paris Games.

The medal is Fox’s fourth in the kayak event stretching back to London 2012, and her second gold after she won in the canoe in Tokyo. She improved her time from the semi-final by a barely believable six seconds, avoiding any penalties. It left her competitors having to take more risks to navigate the tricky course.

And here’s a rundown of the day from an Australian perspective. One that will see the Opals, Kookaburras and Hockeyroos in action early, before swimmers Ariarne Titmus and Mollie O’Callaghan go head-to-head in the women’s 200m freestyle later on.

Here’s today’s full schedule with Badminton again leading things off at 8:30 local time (just under two hours from now).

The boxing image in here is an immediate entry to the Olympic photography hall of fame.

Flava Flav, Water Polo, and the First Lady of the United States sounds like a combination of words that would only come about using Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, but this has been a celeb-heavy opening to the Games.

Yesterday also witnessed one of the youngest podiums in Olympic history with Coco Yoshizawa (14), Liz Akama (15), and Rayssa Leal (16) the medallists in the women’s street skateboarding.

Brazilian Leal is actually among the record holders after she made the podium in Tokyo, alongside Momiji Nishiya and Funa Nakayama. Their collective age was just 43 years 208 days (or one Lauren Jackson).

South Korea have the joint-third most gold medals and joint-fourth most medals overall. This includes yesterday’s gold to the women’s archery team, extending their unbeaten run to an extraordinary 10 consecutive Olympics. South Korea are the only nation to have won that particular medal since it was introduced at Seoul 1988.

By the end of day two Japan had moved alongside early pacesetters Australia on top of the medal table. France’s three memorable golds keep the hosts in the mix, while the USA are getting used to occupying the lower two steps on the podium.

Preamble – Day Three Schedule

Jonathan Howcroft