One down. Seven to go.
China won its first gold medal in diving on Saturday on the first full day of competition in the Paris Olympics, a perfect start for the team of Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen.
China has ruled diving for decades, and three years ago in Tokyo it won seven of eight gold medals. But it’s never pulled off the elusive gold sweep. That’s the goal this time.
The Chinese were first on Saturday in the women’s synchronized three-metre springboard with 337.68 points on five dives. They were followed by Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook of the United States 314.64 points and the British team of Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen with bronze and 302.28 points.
The same Chinese duo also won gold in the last three world championships and were heavy favourites going in.
The crowd, heavy with Chinese fans and and flags, chanted “jiayou” — roughly translated “lets go” — each time the Chinese walked out to dive.
This event was added in 2000, and Chinese women have won gold six times in seven Games. The only loss was to Russia in 2000. China won three years ago in Tokyo with Shi Tingmao and Wang Han.
Starting with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics where China claimed its first diving gold, it had won 47 of 64 gold medals in diving. Add to that 23 silver and 10 bronze.
If you start counting from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China had won 27 of 32 gold at the Olympics.
These are the numbers before Paris. Now add another gold to the total and watch the numbers climb as the Olympis roll on in Paris.
Overnight rain postpones skateboarding
The first event of the skateboarding competition at the Paris Olympics on Saturday was postponed after rain overnight and into the morning.
Skateboarding is played at the outdoor venue of La Concorde Urban Park in Paris. World Skate, the sport’s governing body, cited adverse weather conditions for the move.
Men’s street skateboarding scheduled for Saturday was postponed to Monday. The women’s event is scheduled for Sunday.
Rain has been one of the big stories early in the Games after constant showers and occasional downpours served as the backdrop for the opening ceremony. As of 10 a.m. local time, much of the rain had cleared from the area and no other events had yet been disrupted by rain.
Olympic organizers apologize to South Korean athletes
Olympic Games organizers said they “deeply apologize” for introducing South Korea’s athletes as North Korea during the opening ceremony in Paris.
As the South Korean athletes waved their nation’s flag on a boat floating down the Seine River Friday evening, they were announced in both French and English as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. South Korea is the Republic of Korea.
“We deeply apologize for the mistake that occurred when introducing the Korean team during the opening ceremony broadcast,” the International Olympic Committee said in a post on X in Korean.
The South Korean Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism Vice Minister Jang Mi Ran requested a meeting with IOC President Thomas Bach over the incident, the ministry said in a statement Saturday. It said the ministry also asked South Korea’s Foreign Ministry to file “a strong government-level complaint” with the French government.
The statement said South Korea’s Olympic committee separately asked the organizers of the Paris Games to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.
The Korean peninsula has been bitterly divided into South Korea and North Korea since the end of World War II in 1945.
The blue sign on the boat carrying the South Korean athletes did show the correct name.
Cyclists criticize streets, man-made mountain bike venue
Remco Evenepoel was unimpressed by the rough roads that Olympic cyclists had to cover in the time trial through Paris on Saturday, while Nino Schurter was just as critical of the gravel covering the man-made mountain bike course in nearby Elancourt.
Evenepoel, fresh off his third-place finish in the Tour de France, described the first and last five kilometers of the time trial as bad roads being made worse by the rain, which made for a damp opening ceremony on Friday night and continued into Saturday, when the start of skateboarding had to be postponed due to the weather.
The time trial began upstream from the Eiffel Tower on the Esplanade, and covered 32.4 kilometers (19.8 miles) past Place de la Bastille and through the Polygone de Vincennes, before finishing at the gilded Pont Alexandre III bridge over the Seine River.
“Quite some beautiful sightseeing as well,” Evenepoel acknowledged, “but the road surface is pretty bad in the beginning and in the end. So that might be a problem if you have black spots in front of your eyes in the last kilometers. It’s not so nice.”
The Belgian is the reigning time trial world champion and won the first of two time trials during the Tour de France.
Meanwhile, at Elancourt Hill about 40 kilometres (24.8 miles) outside of Paris, the Olympic mountain bike course was carved through the site of a former sandstone quarry-turned-landfill. It was regenerated into a park in the 1980s, and one of the highest points in the region now offers sprawling vistas of the Eiffel Tower, La Defense and the forests around Paris.
The course was designed by South African expert Nick Floros, who also designed the mountain bike venue for the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Games, and features man-made jumps and rock gardens with stretches of gravel-covered paths.
The women’s competition is Sunday and the men cover the same course Monday.
“It’s slippery. It’s quite loose,” said Schurter, a three-time Olympic medallist and the champion in Rio. “If you go fast it’s super slippery. I hope the gravel still goes a bit to the side and makes it less loose everywhere. You can feel there was no mountain biking before and it’s 100 per cent man-made, like we saw in London and in Rio.
“It could be a bit more natural,” Schurter acknowledged, “but in general it’s nice.”
Source Agencies
