Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 22
August 1, 2024
Epic rowing battle for gold captures glory and cruelty of sport in microcosm | Jonathan Liew
Marloes Oldenburg won gold two years after breaking her back, denying Helen Glover’s crew by a sixth of a second
Wife, mother, three-time Olympic medallist … not necessarily in that order. As Helen Glover crossed the finish line and slumped forwards, letting the oars hang loose at her sides, it was almost as if a great weight was being lifted from her, a sensation not dissimilar to the soul leaving the body.
To either side, pure elation: for the victorious Dutch on the right, for the bronze medallists from New Zealand to the left. What did she feel? An hour later, silver medal around her neck, she still wasn’t quite sure. “Very mixed,” she said. “Because on the one hand, we knew we had the potential to win. On the other, we felt like we raced as strong as we could.”
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July 31, 2024
From Christmas gift to Olympic joy: Kieran Reilly flips his way to BMX silver
It began with a Christmas present. A shiny new BMX bike and the kindling of a dream. Kieran Reilly was eight when he rocked up at Leam Lane skate park on Boxing Day, and as he gingerly navigated the ramps and banks, he could scarcely have known he was embarking on a winding path that would take him from freezing Gateshead to the brutal heat of Paris, and an Olympic silver medal.
There was a certain disappointment, too, after a spectacular and spine-tingling second run that everyone at La Concorde – including Reilly himself – reckoned would be enough to clinch BMX freestyle gold. The five judges disagreed, and by a margin of less than a point it went to an ecstatic José Torres Gil for Argentina’s first gold medal of the Games, with Anthony Jeanjean claiming bronze for the host nation.
Continue reading...July 30, 2024
Andy Murray lives to fight another day on his hyperextended retirement tour | Jonathan Liew
Stubborn Scot and doubles partner Dan Evans looked to be on the way out of Paris 2024 but yet again they found a way
And if it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done slowly. Agonisingly. Leaving no avenue of exquisite pain and drama unexplored. Doing it when we assumed they were done. There is pain in his joints and a heaviness in his step, and yet as Andy Murray reels away in victory as the clock strikes 10.30pm local time, he looks like a child again: the child who first swung a racket in anger, the child who first discovered the pure joy of victory.
Into the good night they went, Murray and Dan Evans, and not gently either but with force and purpose and every intention of returning to fight another day. In a way this has been the motif of Murray’s elongated final curtain call, perhaps even his career: a refusal to vacate the stage before he is ready, a desire to eke out every ounce of talent in his body.
Continue reading...July 29, 2024
Tom Pidcock produces one final burst of audacity in Total Cycling masterclass | Jonathan Liew
Mountain biker stayed in the race with endurance, patience and pure speed. Then came the duel on the hill
Shortly before 4.30pm Paris time, as the last notes of God Save the King were dying away, a mechanic called Rune Kristensen was wheeling the most prized artefact in British cycling back to its truck. The Pinarello bike ridden by Tom Pidcock to Olympic gold was still coated in a fine layer of warm dust, the No 1 mounted on its front, its gears still on the same setting. On the stem, in red, white and blue, was emblazoned Pidcock’s personal motto: “Play your cards right.”
This is a sport where the odds can swivel in an instant, where nothing is ever won and so no cause is ever truly lost. Pidcock, a rider who has made a career out of doing the undoable, knows that better than most. Here he was dealt the most unpromising of hands, and against a hostile home crowd and a flat tyre, he cleaned out the house.
Continue reading...July 28, 2024
Paris 2024 Olympics day two: Peaty shares 100m breaststroke silver after Murray keeps tennis career alive – as it happened
Adam Peaty shares silver as Andy Murray and Dan Evans save five match points to progress to round two in the men’s doubles
It’s also a huge night for Australia’s women’s football team. The Matildas are enormously popular at home, but they opened their Olympic campaign with a tame defeat to Germany in front of a sparse crowd. Victory over Zambia, the lowest ranked side in Group B, is essential.
Meanwhile, Australia’s qualification hopes have been helped by the extraordinary situation that has engulfed defending champions Canada, who have been docked six points and seen their coach banned for a year.
Continue reading...Pressure is something USA’s basketball stars apply to others – they’re having fun
Kevin Durant, LeBron James and co dismantle their world No 4-ranked Serbian opponents in a riotous Paris Olympics pantomime
Perhaps the pivotal moment in this game – tonally, if not competitively – came right at the end of the third quarter. Anthony Edwards sends Nikola Jovic to the shoe shop with an outrageous feint and slip, drains a simple two, and as he peels away he sees pretty much the entire bench doing impressions of him, spinning and reeling, consumed in fits of laughter. That, in hindsight, was probably the point at which a potentially tricky Olympic basketball opener against the world’s No 4 side dissolved fully into riotous, uproarious pantomime.
So no, it’s fair to say Team USA did not get the memo. They are not burdened by your expectations. They are not keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they measure up against 1992. They have not been reading your angsty tweets (with the exception of KD, who almost certainly has). The result: three quarters of pure business, one quarter of pure pleasure, a potential medal rival not simply dispatched but shoved disdainfully aside, a game that was basically conceived at its outset as a series of memes.
Continue reading...Simone Biles returns to Olympics as the circus screams on around her
The VIPs have hooked themselves to the US star’s cultural celebrity, desperate to bathe in her reflected glory
The loge boxes and the VIP seats lie empty for most of the morning. After all, this is precious croissant and champagne time, and nobody wants to waste it on gymnasts no one has heard of. A few minutes before the start of the second subdivision, they shuffle out of the lounges and executive suites and down the steps, pursued by the flashing red dots of a thousand phone cameras.
We have Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. We have Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. We have John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Greta Gerwig and Jessica Chastain, the Jonas Brothers, the now-ubiquitous Anna Wintour, whose main leisure activity these days seems to be sitting in the front row of blue-chip sporting events with an austere expression, like a woman being dragged to watch her nephew’s nativity play.
Continue reading...July 27, 2024
No regrets for Antoine Dupont as he delivers redemption on biggest stage | Jonathan Liew
Rugby’s greatest player gets his golden day nine months after bruising exit from home World Cup
Non, rien de rien.
The turf, he knows. The corridors and the dressing rooms, he knows. The way the noise rolls around the stands, the winding route the coach takes into the guts of the stadium, this he knows. But the open spaces, the daunting feeling of freedom, of flying into the teeth of a gale, this part is new. It is a journey Antoine Dupont has barely begun, and yet here, it ends.
Continue reading...Team GB make splash with first Paris Olympics medal amid diving drama
A sumptuous Chinese procession, an epic Australian choke and a first medal of the 2024 Olympics for Team GB. On a dramatic opening morning in the Aquatics Centre, Scarlett Mew Jensen and Yasmin Harper claimed a bronze medal in the women’s synchronised 3m springboard, proving one of the oldest truisms in sport. You need talent, you need training, you need dedication and you need resilience. But sometimes, you also need a little luck.
Fortune was scarcely a factor for the Chinese pair of Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen, unbeaten at global level since 2022, and who glided to victory by a margin of more than 23 points here. In an event where the bars to entry are vertiginously high, where every competitor is polished and accomplished in ways we can barely imagine, the Chinese still somehow looked as though they were competing on a different plane: not so much diving into the water as diving through it, folding themselves into the pool as if guided by computer design.
Continue reading...Team GB make splash with first medal of Paris Olympics in dramatic diving event
A sumptuous Chinese procession, an epic Australian choke and a first medal of the 2024 Olympics for Team GB. On a dramatic opening morning in the Aquatics Centre, Scarlett Mew Jensen and Yasmin Harper claimed a bronze medal in the women’s synchronised 3m springboard, proving one of the oldest truisms in sport. You need talent, you need training, you need dedication and you need resilience. But sometimes, you also need a little luck.
Fortune was scarcely a factor for the Chinese pair of Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen, unbeaten at global level since 2022, and who glided to victory by a margin of more than 23 points here. In an event where the bars to entry are vertiginously high, where every competitor is polished and accomplished in ways we can barely imagine, the Chinese still somehow looked as though they were competing on a different plane: not so much diving into the water as diving through it, folding themselves into the pool as if guided by computer design.
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