Olympics 2020 day two Kiesenhofers road race glory tennis and gymnastics live

Just getting the swimming heat results together for you, in the meantime why not read about some diving?

Hockey: Australia’s men get up to 6-1 over India, this is a huge result against a quality opponent. Still only the third quarter.

Football: Looks like Brazil and Cote d’Ivoire have finished 0-0 in the men’s draw. That won’t hurt them as yet, as they’re first and second in Group D with one win apiece.

Judo: Hifumi Abe lands the waza-ari against Vazha Margvelashvili, turning him but not landing him for the full ippon that would mean the bout is over. So Japan lead by one point in the gold bout. Abe locks around his opponent’s waist and hangs on like a petrol-station koala to run down the clock. He does, he does, and he wins!

The Abe family has TWO Olympic champions in the space of one hour. The men’s 66kg judo and the women’s 52kg. Japan’s fourth and fifth gold medals of these Games go to the sister and brother duo.

Hockey: I meant to cover this, but we’ve been run off our feet. The Kookaburras - not a type of kangaroo - have been bossing India thus far, but India have just scored their first goal through Dilpreet Singh. The score is 4-1 in the third quarter.

Judo: Daniel Cargnin of Brazil scores one waza-ari early in his match against Baruch Shmailov of Israel and then spends the rest of the bout running away around the ring. Shmailov looks much stronger and keeps attacking, looking to draw level. Cargnin gets lucky (apparently) to not be disqualified after attacking his opponent’s arm, but he gets away with that and manages to keep playing early-rounds Ali in the Rumble, skipping away from his opponent wherever possible to protect his lead. And holds it for bronze.

The other bronze in the men’s 66kg goes to Korea’s Baul An over Italy’s Manuel Lombardo. And now it’s time for the gold.

Basketball: Australia get on the board for these Olympic Games with a comfortable win in the end, 84-65 over Nigeria who rather gave up in the last five minutes. They’ve got Italy and Germany to come in Group B.

An update from our man at the pool, Kieran Pender.

I’m at the Aquatics Centre for the second night of heats at Tokyo 2020. The scheduling is unusual - typically swim meets hold heats in the morning and medals races at night - but American broadcasters insisted that the finals in Tokyo be raced in the morning during US primetime (to the annoyance of many, including US swimmers, who were complaining earlier today).

First up we have the women’s 100m backstroke heats. Australia’s Kaylee McKeown is the swimmer to beat. We then move to the men’s 200m freestyle, the women’s 100m breaststroke (keep an eye out for American defending champion Lilly King) and the men’s 100m backstroke.

The main event of the night is the women’s 400m freestyle - exhibit A in the week long duel between American queen of the pool Katie Ledecky and her young Australian rival Ariarne Titmus. The action will conclude with the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay.

Football: Honduras turned it around to beat New Zealand 3-2, and France got home in what looks like it was a stunning match 4-3. Looks like South Africa got the lead and then France equalised on three occasions, before scoring the winner in injury time.

Basketball: The Boomers are out to 70-58 against Nigeria with just over six minutes to play.

What a piece of craft. The two have gone toe to toe, for the full four minutes of the golden score round. It means that when they finish their current hold, they are supposed to start a new round. But just as Buchard is expecting things to end, Abe flips her around into an arm bar and holds the osaekomi for the required 20 seconds.

She rolls away and punches the mat in celebration. The women’s 52kg gold is hers. And her brother, Hifumi Abe, will contest the men’s 66kg gold a little later in the day.

Judo: Buchard is starting to look fatigued, hanging back and waiting for contact as the golden score round goes past 3 minutes.

Judo: Golden score period ticks up past 1:20. Buchard goes to ground and tries to pull down Abe by her collar, but Abe hold strong above the French fighter. More wrestling, more tussling, and 2:00 comes up.

Judo: Buchard has the sleeve and tries to drag Abe down, but Abe turns Buchard twice, nearly spinning her onto her back, and twice Buchard manages to twist onto her side at the very last moment and avoid giving away a score.

Judo: Time is up, and it will be golden score for a golden medal.

Judo: Buchard is doing the attacking, for the most part, trying to throw her opponent’s poise. Abe has a shido on the board - a yellow card that means she’s in trouble if she gets a second.

Judo: Another Japanese contender for gold via Abe Uta, up against Amandine Buchard of France. Japanese athletes have been in everything so far, not least the street skating gold earlier today which was such a thrilling spectacle. This is the women’s 52kg. They’re quickly into the contest.

Chelsie had better be careful not to get too friendly with anyone at the ceremony.

Judo: In the other women’s 52kg bronze match, Giles scores against Fabienne Kocher of Switzerland. A second waza-ari for Giles ends the bout and gives her the bronze. A strong grapple on the edge of the square, then Kocher attacks and Giles sweeps the leg (hello, Johnny Lawrence) to counter and drop her opponent to her back.

Basketball: Nigeria forgot how to score through the first half of the third quarter, but Jordan Nwora has hit a couple to get them back flowing. It’s 55-49 to Australia.

Cycling: Here’s our report on that dramatic women’s road race earlier today.

Judo: Odette Giuffrida takes bronze for Italy against Reka Pupp of Hungary, flipping her to the match in golden point time after a stalemate in the 52kg category. Giuffrida kneels at the edge of the mat and weeps into the floor, moments after shouting in triumph to the ceiling. We go up, we go down.

If you didn’t catch our extended feature on Team GB athletics captain Dina Asher-Smith, hop in and swim about.

Basketball: Back at the start of the second half for Australia-Nigeria, and Matthew Dellavedova hits a three straightaway. The Boomers defend, take back the court, and Mills hits a three from the top of the arc. Suddenly it’s 49-40, and Nigeria need a couple of Nnamdi Vincent free-throws to stay within reach.

Football: Argentina close out their men’s match against Egypt 1-0 in Group C. France South Africa are 1-1 in Group A, and New Zealand lead Honduras 2-1 in Group B.

Taekwondo: Great Britain’s first medal at Tokyo is a surety, as Bradly Sinden goes through to the men’s 68kg final later today against Ulugbek Rashitov from Uzbekistain. I didn’t catch the end of that semifinal bout, but apparently neither did Sinden’s opponent Shuai Zhao. Sounds like it’ll be worth finding the replay.

Barney Ronay (@barneyronay)

That was liquid Takewondo from Bradly Sinden. 16-9 down at the end of round 2, still losing with 15 seconds to go then wins by eight points

July 25, 2021

Basketball: First half is done and Australia lead 43-40. It was tight most of the quarter before Australia got the lead out to five points, then Nigeria had the chance to close to one point but Precious Achiuwa missed both his free throws after Joe Ingles left a knee hanging out. The Australians miss a couple of shots of their own via Patty Mills late in the piece, and in the end they run down the clock to get to half time with their lead.

Tennis: A whiparound of countries where we have Guardian outlets. The USA had Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jessica Pegula go through in the women’s doubles earlier today, and have matches yet to come in both singles and both doubles divisions.

Great Britain only had one player up today, Liam Broady who beat Argentina’s Francisco Cerndolo.

Australia had Ash Barty’s shock loss this morning, though she’s still in the doubles. Luke Saville also went out in the men’s singles. Going through were James Duckworth, Max Purcell, and Ajla Tomljanovic when her opponent retired in the third-set tiebreak.

Purcell has a doubles match later with John Peers, Saville has one with John Millman, and Sam Stosur will team up with Ellen Perez.

Football: Argentina go up 1-0 over Egypt in the men’s match. Facundo Medina sweeps in a cross. First tournament goal for the Argentines after they lost 2-0 to Australia.

Fancy a feature read? How about this, on a massive underdog beating one of the best in the business.

Eko Yuli Irawan of Indonesia has a couple of goes at 177 kilograms - bear in mind, this is being lifted by a man weighing 61 kilograms. He can’t get it, meaning that Li Fabin of China is guaranteed the gold. Before that, he has a shot at 178 kilograms to see if he can set a new world record. He doesn’t, buzzed by the umpires as his elbows touched his knees which is apparently illegal. The things you learn, hey? But he’s already done enough! He set an Olympic record for his total across his two lifts today, tallying 313 kilograms.

Irawan totalled 302. The bronze goes to Igor Son of Kazakhstan with 294.

Basketball: Australia’s Boomers have been stung right at the end of the first period against Nigeria, who have nailed a couple of three-pointers to level the game. They were trailing 14-21 not long ago but go into quarter time at 23-23.

If you’re wondering, a Boomer in this instance is not an elderly person who dominates the property market, it’s a type of kangaroo. Because every Australian team has to be named after kinds of kangaroos (Wallabies, Matildas, Joeys, Socceroos, Olyroos, you get the drift).

Gymnastics: A lot of people will be wanting to know what’s happening with Simone Biles after a couple of mistakes in qualifying today. The short version is that we’ve had three subdivisions of qualifying and the USA were in the third. There is a subdivision happening now including the teams from Canada, France, Spain and Switzerland, and there’ll be a fifth subdivision later including Korea, Germany, Brazil and Belgium.

Currently the USA team is ranked second. On the individual apparatus results, Biles is first on vault and second on floor, but liable to be knocked out from eighth spot on uneven bars and sixth on beam. So most likely she’ll contest the floor, vault, all-around, and team medals.

Cycling: This is quite the twist. Watching the scenes over the finish line, van Vleuten actually thought that she’d won. There was that breakaway of three, then the peloton caught two. At that point, van Vleuten must have thought that they’d reeled in all the attackers. They never knew that there was still one attacker way out there in front, all on her own. So instead of trying to catch her they played cat and mouse with one another. Kiesenhofer was so far ahead that they didn’t know she existed anymore, and she crossed the line so far ahead that there was no sign of her when van Vleuten pushed up towards the line herself. So van Vleuten was in tears of joy at coming first, but then had to be told that she’d come second instead. The expressions on her face alone have told a story.

She’s done it all on her own, and she’s done it on fumes. She has battled through the last 10 kilometres or so, she battled over the two final peaks, she started to see some of her lead worn away, but she had worked so hard to build it and the peloton never did enough to reel it in! Finally Kiesenhofer allows herself a smile as she comes down the last few hundred metres, and crosses first. She collapses to the ground after reaching safety, tumbling in slow motion off her bike and lying on her back on the bitumen, gasping for enough air to cry.

Silver goes to Annemiek van Vleuten of Netherlands, and bronze is Elisa Borghini of Italy. Those two split out from the pack with three kilometres to go, van Vleuten attacking and Borghini chasing. Lotte Kopecky of Belgium is fourth and there’s a bunch sprint for fifth.

Cycling: The Dutch keep attacking, van Vleuten and van der Breggen swapping on and off the front of the pack. Still two minutes in front, Kiesenhofer gets down to the final kilometre.

Cycling: Three kilometres left to go, Anna Kiesenhofer 2:22 in front, the peloton are closing but they won’t have time to catch her. Just like yesterday, they’re battling for silver and bronze. They let a leader get out in front and assumed that leader would blow up, but it hasn’t happened. The Dutch team in the peloton are pushing up hard now to position themselves for a medal push.

Cycling: She ticks over 5 kilometres left to go, Anna Kiesenhofer. Standing on her pedals working her way up a modest gradient towards the finish. The peloton catches up to Anna Plichta and Omer Shapira, the Polish and Israeli riders who have been out in front all day long but are running out of juice.

Cycling: Kiesenhofer is doing as Carapaz did yesterday. She’s under 7 kilometres from the finish with 2:43 break back to her nearest competitor. She’s all on her own and just has to keep going. She looks in real discomfort but she’s ploughing on.

Gymnastics: Simone Biles is in trouble on the beam. Does everything right while she’s up there. Flip, layout, layout. Back pike. Yes, I’m just writing down what they said on the TV. But dismounts with the full in, and doesn’t entirely stick the landing again! Doesn’t fall but has to take a few steps backwards to regain balance. Not sure what’s up today, she’s not been herself on those landings, but she just smiles. Scores 14.066 which leaves her in sixth place to qualify for the final with more beam experts to come.

San An, Minhee Jang and Chaeyoung Kang get the job done in straight sets. They take the last set 54-51. Their worst shots in the entire match were two arrows worth 8.

Archery: The gold medal match for the women’s teams. This means teams of three. The Koreans, including San An who already has a gold from the mixed archery yesterday, are up against the unofficial Russians. Each player gets two shots per set, so six shots in total, and the scores from those shots are added together to see who wins the set. Sets can be tied.

Second set, and the Koreans are on fire. They shoot 10, 9, 9, 10, 9, 9. While the Russians shoot a string of 8s. One more set for Korea to win the match.

Gymnastics: One of the floor routines was just staged to a string quartet version of Somebody to Love, by Queen. Good areas.

Weightlifting: After the snatch component of the competition, China’s Li Fabin leads with 141 kilograms lifted, Indonesia’s Eko Irawan has 137, and Japan’s Yoichi Itokazu is third with 133. They still have the clean-and-jerk component to go for the 61kg men.

Cycling: Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria is out on her own in the women’s road race, and just starting to take on the Mikuni Pass. This is the second-highest climb at 1171 metres after they already cleared Fuji Sanroku at 1451. She’s got 1:43 on two riders behind, and nearly five minutes on the peloton. A huge amount of work ahead though.

Water polo: Montenegro are going to beat Australia as time counts down. A real shame that water polo bucks the trend by saying ‘preliminary round’ instead of ‘pool match’. Did all the jokes about their horses getting wet spoil the sport’s sense of humour?

Montenegro win 15-10 after trailing 6-7 at half time.

Gymnastics: Australia’s Georgia Godwin puts a good vault together and is awarded 13.766. Simone Biles fronts up for the uneven bars, described as her least favourite apparatus, which means she nails a double-double dismount after an excellent routine that nets 14.566.

Sunisa Lee is her competition from within the US squad, and the Minnesotan assembles a more complex routine with a perfect landing to score 15.200.

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