By the time the first lap of the Women’s 10k Marathon came to an end, the field had spread out considerably during the 10k swim. The return leg took over 22 minutes, meaning it took us 16 minutes compared to the SIX minutes it took to do the ‘downhill’ leg!

It is Moesha Johnson in the gold cap with the Italian couple Ginevra Taddeucci And Giulia Gabrielleschi close behind and riding in the wake of the Australian.

Australia celebrates Chelsea Gubecka And Moesha Johnson in this grueling 10k race, but there are plenty of Australians aiming for glory on Day 13.

Of course, the bigger problem for the competitors wasn’t getting a dose of E.Coli on their broccoli or bumping into a “Seine cigar” – it was the turbulence of the currents, which proved to be unexpectedly strong. These swimmers go with the current, but when they reach the first turn, they have to fight it on the way back.

This is where tactics come in. Although most of these competitors are heading for the reed-lined river bank and Seine walls to neutralise the current as much as possible, the swirling undercurrent is already having an impact on the pack. The first leg lasted around 6.5 minutes, but the race pace has now noticeably dropped and swimmers are giving it their all to essentially swim uphill.

Time for some live Olympic action! The women’s 10k swim will soon take place in the Seine. As is now the norm, Paris’ most controversial venue has been subjected to a barrage of water quality tests. But under sunny skies, organisers have confirmed that bacteria levels in the river are at a level deemed safe for athletes. And so the swimmers are on the starting grid and ready to tan the city…

The skateboarding events of these Games feature some of the youngest (and cutest) athletes. In this world of spotty-faced prodigies, 51-year-old Andy Macdonald is a glorious anomaly. The “Rad Dad” and British team skater mercilessly beat a 12-year-old boy to qualify for these Games and provided endless entertainment in the competition despite missing the men’s park final yesterday.

As Barney Ronay says:

At the end, as I watched him pressuring the crowd and beaming incessantly, I couldn’t help but feel that he was representing another nation. And that nation is the nation of 51-year-old men in cargo shorts.

When Gustave Eiffel began to cobble together the 2,500,000 rivets And 7,300 tons of iron were needed for the most famous landmark of Paris, he wanted it to embody

not only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of industry and science in which we live, and for which the great scientific movement of the 18th century and the Revolution of 1789 paved the way. This monument is being erected as an expression of France’s gratitude.”

Hosting beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower was not on Gustave’s wish list, but the event was a huge success. In the women’s semifinals tonight, the Brazilians will face Australia’s Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy – silver medalists at the Tokyo Games three years ago – while the Canadians will face Nina Brunner and Tanja Hüberli of Switzerland.

For the USA, the event did not go according to plan …

For every rise comes a fall, and these Olympics have brought us not only the cold but also plenty of falls. One of the worst occurred last night when Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma, the world record holder in the 3000m steeplechase, suffered a terrible fall in the Olympic final.

Girma hit his head on the track after his knee struck a barrier on the final lap. Spectators at the Olympic Stadium held their breath as the Tokyo silver medallist lay motionless before paramedics placed him in a neck brace and carried him away on a stretcher.

Matt Hudson-Smith of the Great Britain team missed out on the gold medal in the 400m by just four hundredths of a second yesterday. The bittersweet finish was made all the more bittersweet by the fact that it would have been Britain’s first gold medal in the men’s 400m since the “Flying Scotsman” Eric Liddell in 1924, a race made even more famous by its depiction in the 1981 classic “The Hour of the Victory”.

While Day 12 was a golden day for Australia, it was a day full of bright spots for Team GB.

This victory was all the more special because the Australian team’s coach, Tim Decker, has endured an incredible odyssey. He has overcome more than most to lead the cyclists entrusted to him to peak performance on and off the track. Tim told Kieran Pender:

For me, coaching has always been more than just writing a program on a piece of paper. Coaching is the connection and belief you instill in your athletes. Coaching is not about dodging challenges and achieving a result an athlete thought was impossible.

One of the biggest surprises of these games happened yesterday in the Velodrome, when the Australian Men’s team pursuit defeated Team GB for gold in one of the biggest Olympic cycling events. As Kieran Pender so vividly described, the two teams traded millisecond leads in a fast-paced and painful duel until the end, ultimately giving Australia its first gold medal in track cycling since 2012.

It’s a race of extreme endurance, over 4,000 painful metres. It’s a race where man and machine work together – with the aerodynamic advantages of equipment scrutinised as closely as individual training plans. It’s a race where seconds are measured to the third decimal place, to the single millisecond. And it’s the race where Australia finally becomes Olympic champion.

One of the great things about the Olympic Games is how they inspire fascinated spectators like you and me. Amidst all the gold medal-winning journalism and elite photography capturing champions at The crunching give us an amazing data visualization about the Paris Games.

At the Olympic Games in Paris, a lot of emphasis is placed on the sporting performance of the participants. However, less important is the mental agility and psychological resilience required to reach such heights.

Jess Thom, the lead psychologist for Team Great BritainMadeleine Finlay told the Guardian how she prepares her athletes for failure and success – and for the challenges that arise when the Games are over and they have to return to normal life.

Simon Burnton says these are the other highlights of Day 13 to look out for…

• Climb
  This is the last day of men and women in action. The women’s bouldering and lead semifinals will be followed by the men’s speed final (the one event for each gender in Tokyo, combining all three disciplines, has since been split into two). Since 2021, speed climbing has gotten a lot, well, faster: the men’s world record has been broken 11 times since then, with Indonesia’s Veddriq Leonardo becoming the first person to go under five seconds last year and the American Sam Watson breaking that mark twice in a single day in April.

• Track cycling
  Two of the big velodrome events end today, with the quarterfinals, semifinals and final of the women’s keirin – where riders follow a speed-controlled electric bike for a few laps before launching a wild sprint to the finish line – interrupting the four events of the men’s omnium, each more dramatic than the last, culminating in the brilliant, chaotic, confusing and wonderful points race. The schedule is reversed, with the men’s keirin and women’s omnium (plus the women’s sprint finals) on Sunday.

• Athletics: 400 m hurdles women
  The highly anticipated showdown between Femke Bol of the Netherlands and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the United States, the two fastest women ever over this distance, could be one of the highlights of this year’s athletics competition. The American focused on the flat course in 2023 and returned to the hurdles in Atlanta in May with the fastest time of the year so far, a mark which Bol surpassed 12 days later. Bol has also impressed on the flat course in recent years, breaking the indoor world record twice, but this is where they are at their best.

The medal table shows that 72 nations were on the podium at the Paris Games.

So what can we look forward to on day 13?

Here are the medal events taking place today (all times AEST)

15:30
🥇 Open water swimming women 10km
🥇 Open water swimming, 10 km for women

20:54
🥇 Climbing Men Speed ​​Small Final

20:57
🥇 Climbing Men Speed ​​​​Grand Finale

21:30
🥇 Canoe Sprint Men C2 500m Final A
🥇 Canoe SprintMen C2 500mFinale A

21:40
🥇 Canoe sprint women’s K4 500m final A

21:50
🥇 Canoe sprint men’s K4 500m final A

22:00
🥇 Bronze medal match in men’s hockey: India vs Spain

23:00
🥇 Diving, 3-meter springboard, men, final
🥇 Weightlifting Women 59kg

Will be postponed – Sailing Mixed 470 Medal Race & Mixed Nacra 17 Medal Race

preamble