Paris 2024 Olympics: football and rugby sevens kick off as GB reel over Dujardin – live | Paris Olympic Games 2024

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Our Paris 2024 Olympics homepage is here.

The women’s football kicks off tomorrow at Paris 2024.

In the latest edition of Moving the Goalposts, our weekly women’s football email, Sophie Downey assesses the favourites, the outsiders and the key talking points:

And you can sign up for Moving the Goalposts here.

If you’re only just tuning in, here is today’s Olympics-related content (so far):

For almost the entire history of basketball, the No 1 thing that would help a person succeed was height. From Wilt Chamberlain to Shaquille O’Neal, the taller a player, the better. While size still matters, thanks to the talent of the 6ft 2in guard Stephen Curry, shooting is prized as much as any other attribute. The four-time NBA champion and two-time MVP is bringing his shooting ability to the Olympics.

Russian chef arrested in Paris over alleged ‘large scale’ Olympic Games plot

Daniel Boffey

A Russian chef who has lived in France for 14 years has been arrested on suspicion of plotting with a foreign power to stage “large scale” acts of “destabilisation” during the Olympic Games in Paris.

The 40-year-old man was arrested during a raid of his apartment in central Paris on Sunday where a document linked to an elite Russian special forces unit operating under the command of the FSB, an heir to the KGB, was reportedly found.

This year’s men’s Tour de France and Giro d’Italia champion, Tadej Pogacar, has revealed the Slovenian federation’s decision not to select his girlfriend, Urska Zigart, for the Olympics was a factor in his withdrawal from Paris.

Jeremy Whittle reports:

Why do Olympians have to sleep on anti-sex cardboard beds?

Huzaifah Khan has the answer:

Salt Lake City was awarded the 2034 Winter Olympic Games on Wednesday following a vote of the International Olympic Committee. The US city, that hosted the 2002 Winter Games, earned 83 votes out of 89 at the IOC session, having been named the preferred choice in June.

Meanwhile, via PA:

The French Alps have been confirmed as hosts of the 2030 Winter Olympics at an IOC session in Paris. The award is subject to guarantees by the next French prime minister, and ratification by the national assembly by a deadline of 1 March 2025.

The Games are set to take places at venues across the northern and southern Alps, with ice events staged in Nice on the Cote d’Azur. The IOC president, Thomas Bach, said: “We have full confidence in France to organise an outstanding edition of the Olympic Winter Games, with the same creativity, imagination and flair we are currently experiencing at Paris 2024.”

It will be the fourth time the Winter Olympics have been staged in France, following the inaugural edition in Chamonix in 1924, Grenoble in 1968, and 1992 in Albertville.

Without wishing to drone on about football (here all week), next up is a piece from Ryan Baldi on six US men’s players who can use this summer’s Olympics as a springboard for the 2026 Fifa World Cup:

“Horses don’t volunteer,” Peta’s US senior vice president, Kathy Guillermo, told Sean Ingle. “They can only submit to violence and coercion.

“It’s time for the Olympics to move into the modern era.”

Sean Ingle’s report from Paris on the Dujardin latest:

“A video has emerged of the Team GB equestrian star Charlotte Dujardin repeatedly striking a horse with a long whip during a training session. The incident has led the animal rights group Peta to call for all equestrian events to be banned from the Olympic Games.”

Jonny Weeks

Few places in the world are as ominously named as the Tahitian surf spot Teahupo’o, which translates literally as “wall of skulls”. The left-hand reef break gets its name from the nearby village where it’s said a tribal battle once ended with the victors displaying their enemies’ skulls, but the macabre moniker also tells you all you need to know about this beastly wave.

During south and southwest swells, great slabs of ocean cascade over the coastline’s shallow, razor-sharp corals, creating barrels measuring upwards of 10ft. The waves at “Chopes” are as heavy as they come and the wipeouts deadly serious. In its 128-year history, the modern summer Olympic Games may never have witnessed sport as wild as this.

Bryan Armen Graham

It would certainly appear like there’s not much left to prove for Simone Biles. Her presumptive status as the greatest gymnast ever was conferred years before she’d racked up a record-shattering 37 medals between the Olympics and world championships. Since winning her first national title in 2013, she has won every all-around competition in every meet she has entered, often by stupefying margins. And yet here she is, continuing to toy with the outer limits of human potential while doing the hardest gymnastics of her life, the 27-year-old face of the US Olympic movement on the brink of still more history.

Video has emerged of one of Team GB’s biggest stars, Charlotte Dujardin, whipping a horse more than 20 times in one minute when she was conducting a coaching session with a young rider in a private stable four years ago.

The 39-year-old, who won six dressage Olympic medals in London, Rio and Tokyo, has been banned from the Paris Olympics over allegations that she whipped a horse.

Here is the latest from Sean Ingle:

And here is Rachel Hall’s profile of Dujardin:

Fox and Ockenden to carry Australian flag at opening ceremony

Kieran Pender

Tokyo gold-medal winning paddler Jess Fox and Kookaburras veteran Eddie Ockenden have been chosen to carry the Australian flag at the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, chef de mission Anna Meares announced on Wednesday.

Fox and Ockenden will lead the Australian delegation during the ceremony on Friday, which will take place on boats along the Seine in central Paris. Between them, the pair have won seven Olympic medals during storied careers in national colours – Paris is Fox’s fourth Games and Ockenden’s fifth.

The moment will be particularly special for Fox, who was born in France and retains family connections to the country – her mother and coach, Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, competed in two Olympics for France. Fox is the most successful paddler in history, with over a dozen world titles to her name, but an Olympic gold eluded her in London and Rio before finally arriving in a moment of joy three years ago in Tokyo.

Ockenden, a stalwart of the Australian hockey team, made his national debut in 2006 and has competed at every Olympics since, in Beijing, London, Rio, Tokyo and now Paris. The Kookaburras won the silver medal three years ago, along with bronze medals in 2008 and 2012. Ockenden has also won four consecutive Commonwealth Games gold medals with the Kookaburras.

French police have arrested a Russian man suspected of planning to destabilise the Olympics, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.

The 40-year-old man was detained on Tuesday after police raided his house at the request of the Interior Ministry, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Evidence found at his home raised “fears of his intention to organise events likely to cause destabilisation during the Olympic Games,” it said.

Relations between France and Russia have been deteriorating as the president, Emmanuel Macron, is a prominent critic of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and a strong supporter of the Kyiv government. French authorities have repeatedly flagged suspected Russian disinformation campaigns, while Russia has arrested a French researcher on espionage charges.

The arrested man has been placed in pre-trial detention and may face up to 30 years in prison, the statement said. Russia’s embassy in Paris said it had not received official notification of the detention. “We proactively asked them for clarification. We will seek a reaction,” it said in a statement.

The Olympics officially begin on Friday with a spectacular but logistically fraught opening ceremony along the River Seine. France has rolled out its biggest ever security operation for the Games, which take place against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

The French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, speaking in a radio interview, said the Russian man was suspected of planning “destabilisation,” which could take the form of disinformation or other types of attack.

Le Monde, citing several European intelligence agencies, said authorities had found an identity card on the Russian man that suggested he worked for a unit under the command of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

Last month, French police arrested a 26-year-old Ukranian-Russian man after he blew himself up with explosive materials in a hotel room north of Paris. He was being investigated by France’s domestic spy agency on suspicion of participation in a terrorist conspiracy and bomb plot.

Also in June, Russia arrested French researcher Laurent Vinatier for allegedly failing to register as a foreign agent while gathering information on the Russian military.
He is part of a growing list of foreign nationals detained in Russia who have found themselves caught up in the crisis in relations between Russia and the West during the Ukraine war. Reuters

Returning for a moment to women’s football, a rather scandalous tale broke overnight, European time:

New Zealand’s Olympic Committee says their women’s football team had their training session disrupted by a drone flown by a staff member of the Canadian team. Defending Olympic champion Canada and New Zealand – the Football Ferns – meet in their opening match at the tournament on Thursday.

Peter Bradshaw

In honour of both the imminent Paris Olympics and the centenary of the 1924 Olympics, also in Paris, here is a rerelease of this superbly watchable true-story parable of patriotism, faith and meritocratic success within the system, much admired by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden. It was produced by David Puttnam, who had discovered the story of the devout Christian athlete Eric Liddell refusing to run on Sunday and commissioned a terrifically punchy and sympathetic script from Colin Welland (whose victorious Oscar night cry of “the British are coming!” was destined to be endlessly and ironically re-quoted at moments of British failure and disappointment in Hollywood). It was Welland who incorporated Jewish sprinter Harold Abrahams into the film (as well as another gold medallist, Douglas Lowe, who refused any involvement and had to be written out).

You really need to read that Andy Bull piece on the boxer Cindy Ngamba, which is as brilliant on the sporting side as it is on the UK’s ludicrously cruel hostile environment for refugees and asylum seekers:

“Some people, the first time they get hit, they get frightened. But what that boy did made me. Because I thought: ‘Oh, so that’s it, that’s what it is like to get punched, that’s all it is.’ So when that boy hit me, he made me fall in love with boxing.”

“Surely,” writes Phil Grey on email, “… if Julián Álvarez wins a gold medal for Argentina, the only things he has left to win are an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.”

I don’t know about that, Phil. There’s La Liga, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 to think about, among others, before he switches to acting or some kind of scientific research.

But Olympic gold would be a nice addition to the Fifa World Cup, Copa América, and the 22-23 treble with Manchester City, not to mention the Argentinian domestic title he won with River Plate. Harry Kane he is not. He’s only 24!

“On any given day, any opponent can beat anyone,” the USWNT’s Emma Hayes said yesterday of the women’s football competition in France. “Shocks in the women’s game don’t exist anymore. I think we need to reframe our focus a little bit and have respect for the rest of the world.

“My only focus is on winning the first game. It’s always a mistake when you think in any other way … you have to win the group, only then can you be in a position to discuss anything else.”

The US women’s team kick off against Zambia, in Group B, tomorrow. Here is Suzanne Wrack on how Hayes, the former Chelsea Women head coach, is in at the deep end at these Paris Olympics:

Andy Bull

It’s the stink of the gym Cindy Ngamba remembers best. Sweat, leather and bleach. It was like nothing she had ever smelled, and she loved it. She was 15, and had just finished football training when she saw these boys come into the changing rooms at her youth club. They were steaming in the heat and it looked, to her, like they were on fire. She was curious, walked past them through the door and saw more of them, some working heavy bags, some fighting shadows, some sparring in a ring. It was the first time she had ever seen anyone box. “And I said to myself, right then: ‘This, this is what I want to do.’”

Those rugby sevens fixtures for later are allowing my cynicism to melt away, replaced by real excitement.

I’ll be able to catch the first 30 minutes of Guinea v New Zealand in mens’ football … or Egypt v Dominican Republic … or a bit of both?! Before Ireland v South Africa in the sevens at 16.30 BST. Bring it on. I’ll be locked into France’s curtain-raiser in the sevens before that too, naturellement.

Footballistically, there are eight men’s fixtures coming up today. France v United States at 20.00 BST will be the highest-profile among them:

Group B: Argentina v Morocco (14.00)
Group C: Ukbekistan v Spain (14.00)
Group A: Guinea v New Zealand (16.00)
Group C: Egypt v Dominican Republic (16.00)
Group B: Iraq v Ukraine (18.00)
Group D: Japan v Paraguay (18.00)
Group A: France v United States (20.00)
Group D: Mali v Israel (20.00)

Note that you can filter the live schedule by individual sports.

The waiting, as cliche-peddlers are fond of saying, is nearly over. You will find today’s sporting schedule via the link below.

France and Antoine Dupont kick off their eagerly-awaited men’s rugby sevens campaign against the United States at 15.30 BST. Ireland v South Africa at 16.30 BST is a highly significant fixture given recent goings-on in the 15-a-side game, not to mention last year’s Parisian pool-stage dust-up at the Rugby World Cup. New Zealand v South Africa will follow at 20.30 BST and there’s a bit of recent history there too.

In case you missed it last night, here is Rachel Hall’s profile of Charlotte Dujardin, after the very significant news of her withdrawal and subsequent ban:

Kieran Pender

From an Australian perspective, the Olympics really begin today. First up the Australian Olympic Committee will name the nation’s two flag-bearers ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony. The smart money for the female flag-bearer is Jess Fox, Tokyo gold medallist and the most successful canoeist of all time. Fox was born in France and has family here – her mother/coach represented France at two Olympics, adding a touching local element. Hockey veteran Eddie Ockenden is among the names being touted as potential male flag-bearers.

The first Australians to see action in Paris will then kick off this afternoon, with the men’s Rugby Sevens squad facing Samoa and then Kenya later this evening. While the Australian women won gold in Rio, the men have never reached a medal match, but hopes are high.

The other major Australian moment today will be the Matildas’ final training session and media opportunity before their Olympic football campaign begins tomorrow against Germany in Marseille. The team has been sweating on a few injury woes, so expect an update tonight on whether key players are fit. I’m in Marseille now – there’s not quite the same Olympic buzz as Paris, but it’s a stunning day on the Mediterranean.

Andy Bull considers what the Covid-hit 2020 Tokyo Olympics meant for Japan and for the Olympic movement: and what these Games in Paris may come to represent for France and the wider world:

“Once it was over, the hosts were so very keen for everyone to please leave that they gave athletes 48 hours to get out of the country. A year later, the Associated Press quoted a Japanese academic studying the legacy of the Games as saying “people don’t want to talk about it or even think about it” …

“If Tokyo ended up becoming the Covid Games, the Paris edition – taking place against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East and the unavoidable sense that Emmanuel Macron’s own grand national project is listing beneath his feet – has already been reframed as the Conflict Games.”

I am not entirely clear on how having a former BBC weather forecaster in-house is going to help Team GB win medals. But good luck to them.

Team GB have hired the former BBC weather forecaster, Penny Tranter, as they seek an extra one per cent in their bid for a big medals haul in Paris.

As well as providing daily weather reports, Tranter, who worked for the BBC from 1992 to 2008, has been brought on board to predict longer-term patterns amid fears these Games will be the hottest on record.

Temperatures in the French capital are currently in the mid-20s degrees Celsius but it is forecast to get hotter next week. In an attempt to offset the carbon footprint, Paris organisers have rolled out a number of initiatives, the most high-profile of which is following the lead of Tokyo 2020 and having all beds at the Olympic village made from recycled cardboard.

To improve sleep for their athletes, Team GB brought 942 blankets and 578 mattress toppers. UK Sport issued a target of between 50 and 70 medals for Team GB . If they win 70, it would represent their best result at an overseas Games, beating the 67 they won at Rio 2016.

They have also brought with them a freight weight in excess of 22 tonnes in food and drink supplies alone, which includes 6,500 bags of sweets, salted popcorn, 22,000 cereal bars, 700 jars of whole earth peanut butter and more than 1,000 boxes of muesli.

More than 1,000 bottles of squash have also been brought across the Channel as well as 945 boxes of English Breakfast tea – estimated to contain 47,250 tea bags. A total of 85,000 items of kit have been distributed thanks to the efforts of 400 staff and volunteers. (PA Media)

Angelique Chrisafis

When Paris’s gigantesque, city-centre Olympic Games opening ceremony begins on Friday night, with boats full of athletes gliding side by side down the River Seine in a configuration not seen since the days of King Louis XV, there is more at stake than France’s global image.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, who has promised the Olympics will “light up people’s hearts” in a “summer of French pride”, is depending on the Games to restore morale in a deeply divided nation, which only weeks ago he had warned could be facing “civil war”.

Quite boldly, Paris wants to outdo all previous Olympic Games on every possible front – dazzling visuals, sustainability, gender equality, even by confounding expectations as a famously meat‑eating nation by providing the most ever vegetarian food.

Hello and welcome to our live Paris 2024 coverage on the day the sport begins: football and rugby sevens are both due to kick off later.

From a British perspective, the agenda is dominated by news that the dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin, who was aiming to become Britain’s most decorated female Olympian at these Games, has been banned after alleged mistreatment of a horse.

Dujardin yesterday withdrew from the Olympics, and apologised, before news of her ban came later. More on that story, and lots of other stuff, coming up.