Italy’s spectacular summer scuppered golden dreams in the men’s 4x100m, while the women’s team took bronzeThe mixed relays may have finished last weekend, but what a lot of conflicting emotions for the eight British sprinters who won medals in the 4x100m on Friday night.The men won the silver behind Italy, the women the bronze behind Jamaica and USA, and between them the British athletes ran the gamut from joy to frustration, anger and regret. Dina Asher-Smith was among the disappointed; she had hoped to win more than one bronze at these Games. It was not her injured hamstring that was nagging at her, but the sense that the relay team should have done better. Related: Laura Muir keeps faith and...
The extreme surveillance at this unique Games has at times felt like a cautionary tale but the patience and generosity of the people of Tokyo has been a reminder of the best of usCrouched behind a bush in the shadow of the vast Tokyo Big Sight building, the bearded American man from the small Ukrainian magazine said: “I’m writing an article about smoking at the Olympics.”A little ragged, a little wired and jazzed-up, the man from the Ukrainian magazine had something about him in that moment of the crazed photographer at General Kurtz’s lair in Apocalypse Now, the person you meet at the end of a long, wild road who leans in and whispers some frazzled truth in your ear....
The run of Olympic Games when one British gold medal followed another in seamless style appear to be at an endOn a day that looks to have marked the end of Great Britain’s dominance of track cycling at Olympic level, there were symbols aplenty that the world has moved on, beyond the bald facts of the medal table. Dramatic crashes involving the men’s and women’s team pursuit squads closed the run of Olympic Games when one British gold medal followed another in seamless style, the hallmark of the track action in Beijing, London and Rio.In all the chaos, the sprinter Jason Kenny became Britain’s most decorated Olympian with his eighth medal in total, a silver in the team sprint, putting...
The Matildas pushed Sweden to their limits in the semi-final and expectation is rising after their extended run in TokyoTony Gustavsson bristles as he hunches over the post-match microphone. It was the same microphone behind which, 24 hours earlier, the Matildas head coach sat beaming while previewing Australia’s historic semi-final against Sweden. But now, after his side’s 1-0 defeat by the Rio silver medallists, it is a wonder the metal does not melt in the white-hot reactor of his voice.An Australian journalist asks the delicate question: did you tell the players they should be proud of what they have achieved here in Tokyo? Gustavsson stares, unblinking, as though offended by the journalist’s use of past tense. “I didn’t say they...
The presence of 335 Russian athletes has raised eyebrows, but finger-pointing from Britain and the US invites dark chucklesWe will ROC you! Let’s face it, the retro cold war touches dripping away at the back of Tokyo 2020 were always likely to run hot at some point. In the end it took a particularly ticklish men’s backstroke 200m to turn the tap.The presence of 335 Russian Olympic Committee athletes at these Games has seemed to surprise those who had assumed the ban for state-sponsored doping might have restricted Russia’s physical presence in some way. Or indeed that Russia’s athletes would have to compete in Japan as something other than Russia, beyond a few shifts in branding and a change of...