First, the facts. Great Britain, the reigning Olympic women’s hockey champions, began their title defence with a 2-1 defeat to Germany in Pool A. The statistics will show that a scuffed penalty from Viktoria Huse cancelled out Sarah Jones’s close-range opener before Charlotte Stapenhorst scored the winner in the third quarter. But that’s not the […]

Day one of the Olympic track cycling at the Izu velodrome will give an instant idea of how Team GB will fare in the two flagship disciplines, the four-rider, 4,000m team pursuits for men and women. The quartets have been dominant in recent Games, but with barely any international track racing in the past 12

A forlorn-looking Jade Jones admitted she was left feeling “absolutely gutted” by defeat at the first hurdle in Tokyo 2020. Jones came to these Olympic Games looking to become the first taekwondo athlete to win a third gold medal. However, she lost her last-16 contest to the Refugee Team competitor Kimia Alizadeh, ending hopes of

Tunisian teenager Ahmed Hafnaoui caused one of the biggest stirs of the Tokyo Olympics so far with a stunning 400m freestyle gold medal – but insisted his massive personal best was purely down to “hard work”. The 18-year-old summoned a thrilling last 50m to come home in 3min 43.36sec to overhaul the Australian Jack McLoughlin,

In the two months since Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open to protect her mental health, after all the noise that followed her decision not to attend press conferences there, she has been everywhere and nowhere at once. As she rested at home, the Tokyo media blitz planned long ago went into overdrive. There

Li Fabin embraced his inner flamingo with a unique stance on the way to winning Olympic gold in weightlifting on Sunday. Just don’t try it at home, the Chinese athlete warned. Li stood on one leg while lifting 166 kilograms – nearly three times his own body weight – with his right leg sticking out

Bradly Sinden had to settle for a heartbreaking silver medal after losing his -68kg men’s taekwondo final to Ulugbek Rashitov of Uzbekistan. The Briton led with eight seconds left on the clock but teenager Rashitov pulled off a dramatic head kick before hanging on for a 34-29 success. It was a disappointing end to a

Jade Jones came to these Olympic Games talking about making herself “a legend” by winning a third straight Taekwondo gold. In the event her pursuit of ultimacy was over in six minutes as Kimia Alizadeh of the IOC Refugee Team fought a brilliant bout to knock Jones out of the gold medal race and leave

There was a little bit of Olympic history made at Tsurigasaki beach early on Sunday morning when four surfers paddled out into the Pacific for the start of the Games’ very first surfing competition. No one was exactly sure who caught the first wave, maybe the Brazilian, Italo Ferreira. “It was a terrible start,” he

Perhaps the most pleasing aspect of Team GB’s progression to the knockout stage of the Olympics following their 1-0 victory over Japan was that when the plan faltered there was a back-up. Manager Hege Riise had resorted to a more defensive midfield against the hosts, with Wales’s Sophie Ingle partnering England’s Keira Walsh in an