Paris 2024 Day Three Report: Team GB’s best start to a modern two-week Olympics

Team GB win six medals on day three including two gold medals in mountain biking and eventing. It is Team GB’s best start to a modern two-week Olympics.

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Team GB won their first gold medal of Paris 2024 after retaining their team eventing title at Versailles.

Laura Collett, Tom McEwan and Ros Canter narrowly led France in the standings over night with just the showjumping event to go on Monday morning.

However, an outstanding performance ensured that GB were comfortable winners, finishing with 91.30 penalty points, 12.3 ahead of the hosts with 103.60 points who took silver. Japan won the bronze medal.

Collett returned a few hours later to win bronze in the individual eventing competition. Germany’s Michael Jung won gold and Australia’s Christopher Burton won silver.

Tom Pidcock sensationally won Britain’s second gold of the day in the men’s mountain bike race. Pidcock suffered a puncture on the fourth lap that cost him 40 seconds and knocked him down to ninth as the race entered its final stages.

However, the Olympic champion from Tokyo made his way back through the leading pack before remarkably catching French rival Victor Koretzky on the seventh lap.

They swapped the lead several times on the last lap but Pidcock eventually pulled clear before the final straight. He finished 9 seconds ahead of Koretzky to retain his Olympic title.

DIVING

Tom Daley won his 5th Olympic medal after securing silver in the synchronized 10m platform alongside Noah Williams.

The British pair performed six superb dives and finished with a score 463.44 to comfortably finish in the medal places. Chinese duo Yang Hao and Lian Junjie took gold with a score 490.35. Canada won the bronze medal.

It is likely to be Daley’s last games after previously competing in Beijing, London, Rio and Tokyo.

SWIMMING

Great Britain’s Matt Richards won silver in the men’s 200m freestyle final but was pipped to gold by Romanian David Popovici by two hundredths of a second. USA’s Luke Hobson won bronze.

It is Richards’ second Olympic medal after winning 4x200m relay gold in Tokyo. He will be back in the pool to defend that title and compete in the individual men’s 100m freestyle.

17-year-old Canadian sensation Summer Macintosh won her second medal of Paris 2024 by dominating the 400m women’s individual medley.

Her winning time of 4.24.38 was three seconds outside of her world own record. Americans Katie Grimes and Emma Weyant won the silver and bronze medals. British swimmer Freya Colbert came fourth.

In other news, Adam Peaty tested positive for covid on Monday morning after initially feeling unwell after his 100m breaststroke silver. His inclusion in the relays later in the week is now uncertain.

CANOE SLALOM

Adam Burgess won silver in the men’s canoe slalom final. His time of 96.84 put him into the lead with one paddler to go. However, France’s Nicolas Gestin produced a superb performance to win the gold medal in a time of 91.36. Slovakian Matej Benus won bronze.

GYMNASTICS

The men’s team gymnastics final ended in dramatic fashion when China’s Su Weide dramatically fell off the horizontal bar twice.

China led the standings going into the competition’s final rotation but were overtaken by Japan to steal the gold medal off their rivals. The USA won the bronze medal with Team GB finishing fourth.

ROWING

Team GB’s men’s and women’s eights are comfortably into Saturday’s finals after winning their heats. The women’s team finished with a time of 6.16.12. The men’s posted a time of 5.37.04.

TENNIS

Novak Djokovic remains on course to win his first Olympic gold medal after beating Rafael Nadal 6-1 6-4 to progress to the men’s third round at Roland Garros. Nadal will return in the men’s doubles when he teams up with compatriot Carlos Alcaraz.

Dan Evans will also have to rely on the doubles as he was easily beaten 6-1 6-2 in the singles second round by Stefanos Tsitsipas. Evans and Andy Murray’s second round doubles match is on Tuesday.

RUGBY SEVENS

Women’s GB beat South Africa 26-17 in their crunch final pool match to qualify for the quarter-finals.

However, they were easily beaten by the USA 17-7 after a disappointing second half performance.

HOCKEY

Team GB women’s team now have an uphill struggle to qualify for the knockout stages after losing 4-0 to Australia. They have lost both matches so far in Paris and must now beat South Africa in their next match on Wednesday.

BOXING

Great Britain’s boxers are having a difficult games to say the least. This time it was Delicious Orie’s turn to fall fail of the judges, losing a split decision to Davit Chaloyan in the super-heavyweight division.

It means that Team GB have only two boxers left having already had four fighters eliminated in the first round.

TEAM GB’S BEST START TO A MODERN OLYMPICS

According to freelance journalist Sam Freedman, this has been Team GB’s best start to a modern two-week Olympics having never won ten medals by the end of the third day of action.

On his X account Freedman made the following comparisons to the previous four Olympics.

“London 2012: No gold + three medals. Rio 2016: One gold + four medals. Tokyo 2020: Three golds + seven medals. Paris 2024: Two golds + ten medals.”