France bid a reluctant farewell to an “enchanted” fortnight of Olympic sport on Monday as French politics returned to political deadlock, with President Emmanuel Macron still needing to choose a prime minister that will appease all the rival factions that emerged from snap elections he called in June. Source link
See at Sling TV Sling TV Carries the five channels you need for $57 a month Show more (5 items) Swimming events at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris kicked off Saturday, and Team USA put on a strong showing, medaling in three of four events, including its first gold. Each day, there are two sets of heats for men’s and women’s events — morning and evening sessions — concluding with the final of the women’s 4x100m medley relay on Sunday, Aug. 4. The full schedule and times are at the bottom of this page. Recent Olympics have proved to be a straight fight between the United States and Australia for dominance in pool-based events, with the US leading the swimming medal tally at the past six Games. American hopes will be largely pinned on Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel, Team USA’s two most decorated swimmers. Ledecky is widely expected to win the Women’s 800m and 1,500m freestyle. Hopes of her making it a golden hat trick were dashed on Saturday as she took bronze …
“No politics at the Olympics! Bye! Thank you!” To be fair to the group of Chinese fans outside the table tennis arena at Porte de Versailles, this is undoubtedly the most sensible answer to any question about the tectonic ripples, the ping‑ping diplomacy angle of a meeting across the pink and black Olympic table of China and the entity called Chinese Taipei, also known, outside of Olympic unreality, as Taiwan. These are not matters to be taken lightly. In May this year the Chinese government announced it would consider applying the death penalty to those promoting the cause of Taiwanese separatism, a complex proposition given Taiwan is, on the face of it, already separate; but just another note in the drip-drip of manoeuvres and pre-invasion chat being enacted across the Straits. So yes, probably best to keep shtum on all that for now. The Olympic Games do insist on throwing up these moments. Session two, Sunday afternoon, South Paris Arena, third quarter‑final of the mixed doubles. China, the draw decided, would play its most coveted neighbour. This is an occasion that should be …
France’s Léon Marchand won a gold medal and set an Olympic record in the men’s 400-metre individual medley at the Paris Games on Sunday, pulling away from his rivals as thousands of fans at La Defense Arena chanted his name. Issued on: 28/07/2024 – 21:47 3 min With a flag-waving crowd cheering his every stroke, Léon Marchand delivered a swimming gold for France with a dominating victory in the men’s 400-meter individual medley Sunday night. Marchand was ahead as soon as his head popped from the water and he steadily pulled away from the field in what was essentially two separate races: Marchand racing the clock and everyone else competing for silver and bronze. He was under world-record pace on the final turn but faded a bit coming home, touching in 4 minutes, 2.95 seconds — an Olympic record, but just shy of his own world mark of 4:02.50. Marchand claimed that mark at last year’s world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, erasing a record held by Michael Phelps for 15 years. Not surprisingly, the young …
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The Paris Olympic Games opened on Friday night with a high-kitsch, riverside spectacle, as an armada of boats carried athletes along the Seine, dancers dangled from high poles, drag queens paraded on bridges and the Olympic rings lit up the Eiffel Tower – all under unrelenting, torrential rain. France had promised its opening ceremony would be the biggest open-air show on Earth. More than 300,000 people watched from the riverside and bridges – and hundreds more stood at windows and balconies – as a show of dance, live music and acrobatics unfolded along more than 6km of river from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Eiffel Tower. The show had promised to light-heartedly deconstruct French stereotypes, and the US singer Lady Gaga was the first star to set the tone for a tongue-in-cheek kitsch spectacle. She appeared from a giant golden staircase on the edge of the Seine surrounded by pink pompoms and giant pink feather fans, for a high-kicking cabaret performance of France’s famous 1960s music-hall number Mon Truc en plumes by Zizi Jeanmaire. Lady …
France’s high-speed rail network has been hit by coordinated “malicious acts” including arson attacks that have brought major disruption to many of the country’s busiest rail lines hours before the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. Eurostar journeys are also affected, with eighteen Eurostar trains due to run between London and Paris, but an unknown number having been cancelled. Travellers from London to Paris face 90-minute delays and train cancellations on the day of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. We’re interested to hear how people have been affected by the disruption, whether on the way to the Olympics in Paris or on other journeys or commutes. Share your experience Tell us if you’ve been affected by the travel disruption on the French train network this week. Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for …
The city of Paris is making last-minute preparations for the 2024 Olympic Summer Games; the opening ceremony will take place on Friday, and events will last until August 11, followed by the Paralympic Games from August 28 to September 8. Athletes, fans, and supporters from around the world are pouring in as the city prepares dozens of venues, tightens security, and readies itself for the first Olympic opening ceremony to ever take place outside a stadium. Gathered here are images from Paris (and Tahiti) from the past week. To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here. Source link
On the Petit Pont that links the left bank of the Seine to Île de la Cité and the glories of the Notre Dame Cathedral, Clint Little, 47, from Illinois in the US midwest, was getting frustrated. “This is stupid – maybe we can see it from the back,” he suggested to his wife, Annetta, 48, and 18-year-old son, Wade. The Littles had been thoroughly enmeshed in what is not so much a ring of steel at the heart of Paris as a suffocating lattice of metal barricades, dead ends and restricted zones, marshalled by a vast army of police, soldiers and private security officers. Paris has never seen anything like it. The Littles certainly had seen nothing like it – and they were getting no closer to seeing the Notre Dame, which was already half covered up due to restoration works after the fire of five years ago. “In the US, we have done a lot of Olympics and there is security but we try and do it without restricting the freedom of its citizens,” Little …
Oleksandr Zheltyakov gazes across the pool and points towards the hundreds of yellow seats that run along its flank. He has cast his mind back to December 2019, when he was 14 and won his first Ukrainian championship in front of a delighted home town crowd at Dnipro’s Meteor facility. “Just thinking about it fires me up,” he says. “It was before the war, a full stand, supporters cheering, adults, children, in a place I know so well. When you win here, it feels like you’re at a Taylor Swift concert.” There is a different soundtrack nowadays. A few minutes later, the air raid siren sounds and an employee at this famous venue, one of the main training bases for Ukraine’s Olympic swimmers, walks over to suggest we continue our conversation on that opposite side. We have been sitting beneath the row of huge windows that usually give a humid arena its sense of light and space. The panes are already in a bad way: some cracked, some taped over, others replaced by material of …
