Volleyball: France get over the line to take men’s gold (2024)

The United States women’s soccer team and men's basketball team both won gold on the penultimate day of the Paris Olympic Games.

The USWNT defeated Brazil 1-0 on Mallory Swanson's goal, while LeBron James and co defeated France 98-87 on the back of Steph Curry's red-hot three-point shooting.

On the track, American Masai Russell won the women's 100m hurdles final, while the U.S. teams won both 4x400m relays.

And New Zealand’s Lydia Ko emerged triumphant in the women’s golf tournament to complete her set of Olympic medals, after she won a silver at Rio 2016 and a bronze at Tokyo 2020.

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The hosts have done it again! France wins back-to-back gold medals in the men’s volleyball. The host nation is now the third country to repeat as Olympic gold medalists at the event.

Poland looked poised to steal the third set, up 17-16 until an unreal dig from Earvin N’Gapeth shifted the momentum and allowed France to tie the game.

Afterward, viewers were treated to two outstanding service runs — the first was from Quentin Jouffroy, which contained two aces and pushed the score from 18-18 to 23-18.

The latter from Polish ace Wilfredo Leon, who staved off multiple match points at 24-20 to make it a nervy 24-23 before hitting his last serve out of bounds.

In a match between two high-level teams, it’s easy to assume that the sold out crowd powered Les Bleus to victory.

One of the enduring images of the Tokyo Olympics came in the high jump, where Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi elected to share the gold medal.

So it was setting up for a storybook moment today when Barshim and Tamberi both qualified for the final in Paris. But Tamberi may not be able to compete after all.

The Italian said in a social media post that kidney pain may prevent him from jumping in the final, which begins at 1pm ET at the Stade de France. Tamberi wrote in Italian:

💬 “Will I still take the platform tonight? Yes, but I really don’t know how I will jump in this condition.”

It’s been a bad luck Games for Tamberi. Italy’s flag bearer, he lost his wedding ring in the River Seine during the opening ceremony.

I was semi-joking when I said it’s shaping up to be a record summer Olympics, but turns out I wasn’t!

That gold by Katie Vincent in canoeing earlier breaks the number of gold medals — and medals overall — that the Canadians have won in a Summer Olympics.

They now have EIGHT golds and 25 total medals. Canada had seven gold and 24 overall in Tokyo.

The outlier is the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, when the Canadians sent their largest contingent ever and garnered 44 medals — but those Games were of course boycotted by the Soviet Union and 14 other Eastern bloc countries.

China has its 34th gold medal of Paris 2024, and it came in the weightlifting as Liu Huanhua took the men’s 102kg gold title.

The 2023 world champion shared the lead with a 186kg snatch, then only needed one attempt to beat Armenia’s Garik Karapetyan with a huge 220kg clean and jerk that was the best of the lot.

Huanhua takes gold then, and that puts China clear of the United States’ 33 golds in the Paris 2024 medal table.

However, Karapetyan misses out on a medal as Akbar Djuraev takes Uzbekistan’s first silver of the Games. Neutral athlete Yauheni Tsikhantsou claimed bronze.

Anyone who saw Serbia push Team USA so hard on the court two days ago will appreciate they deserved to leave with bronze.

Serbian big man Filip Petrusev agrees, and he discussed his pride in their finish to Paris 2024 — avoiding their defeat to the U.S. men being their undoing and securing bronze over Germany earlier today:

💬 “We weren't going home without a medal, especially after what happened two days ago. We owed it to ourselves. We owed it to the country, to the people that supported us. Two days ago, the whole country was so proud of us, so we had to bring something home. That was the mentality.

“You all saw it two days ago against the best team ever maybe (in Team USA), that needed all kinds of help and maybe luck a little bit (to win)...

“But I just hope this is not our last time altogether. I think this team can...in the future, be even better. This might be one of the best teams Serbia ever had.”

You can read more from Sam Amick on Serbia’s success with the link below.

Katie Vincent’s gold was the third in the canoeing today. The second belonged to Josef Dostal as the Czech Republic star won the men’s kayak single 1000m.

That is his fifth Olympic medal — and after one silver and a trio of bronze, he finally has his hands on a gold.

It was a double Hungarian charge behind him, with Adam Varga taking silver and Balint Kopasz the bronze.

Canada’s Katie Vincent has won gold in the canoe sprint women’s C1 200m.

This is the second medal of the event for Vincent, after she won bronze with Sloan MacKenzie in the women’s sprint C2 500m.

Another gold medal for Canada in what’s shaping up to be a record summer Olympics!

The home-court advantage for French teams has been felt throughout the Paris Games.

And it’s been the same during the gold men’s volleyball match between France and Poland.

You can see how much the French players are feeding into the energy from the crowd — especially after going two sets clear.

France is now one set away from becoming back-to-back Olympic champions and the first host nation to win this event since the U.S. did it at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge was bidding for a special treble this morning but it was not to be, as early cramps caused issues before the Kenyan later pulled out of the men’s marathon before the finish — the first time he had done so in what has been a stellar career.

Speaking after the race, Kipchoge told Olympics.com:

💬 “It is a difficult time for me. This is my worst marathon. I have never not finished. That’s life. Like a boxer, I have been knocked down, I have won, I have come second, eighth, 10th, fifth — now I did not finish.

“You will see me in a different way, maybe giving people motivation, but I will not run… I don’t know what’s next. I need to go back (home), sit down. I need to evolve and feature in other things.”

Brooke Raboutou has her silver medal! And no doubt it feels good.

The 23-year-old has earned the 112th medal for the United States at Paris 2024 and a 40th silver.

Coming in the women’s boulder and lead, it means two sport climbing medals for the U.S. after Sam Watson took bronze in the men’s speed.

With two birdies in four holes, Nelly Korda — the world No. 1 and defending Olympic champion — is making an early stir in the final round of the women’s golf competition at Le Golf International.

It’s been an erratic week for Korda. The gold medal winner in Tokyo shot an opening even-par 72 on Wednesday, then began Thursday with a front-nine 32 before taking a quadruple-bogey 7 on the par-3 16th and finishing with a 2-under 70.

Yesterday she sandwiched two early bogeys and a late bogey on Saturday with five birdies to shoot another 2-under 70.

Now through four holes in the final round, Korda was two shots off the lead held by Japan’s Miyu Yamash*ta and New Zealand’s Lydia Ko.

Ko has the rarest of feats in front of her — backing up a silver in Rio 2016 and bronze in Tokyo 2020, with a gold in Paris.

Yamash*ta, ranked No. 18 in the world, birdied the second hole today to move into a share of the lead.

Rose Zhang, meanwhile, playing in the final group with Ko and Switzerland’s Morgane Metraux, is still looking for some early momentum after a pair of early pars. Zhang and Metraux both remain one shot off the lead.

The atmosphere at Le Bourget has sounded superb for the Olympic climbing and it is is signing off in similar style today.

The women’s combined competition ends in rapturous applause as Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret battles through injury from the earlier boulder climb to just miss out on the top but do enough to top score.

A teary Garnbret collapses to her knees after her almighty effort, and soon on the scene is the woman she beat into second, USA’s Brooke Raboutou.

Her final climb was superb, as was the moment she realized she was guaranteed a medal.

Japan’s Mori Ai went close but in the end, Jessica Pilz of Austria held on for bronze.

Oh. My. Goodness. Lisa Carrington was already something of an Olympic legend — only now, the status of the New Zealand canoeist has been underscored.

Carrington has just won gold in the 500m women’s kayak singles in an Olympic-best 1:47.36.

With that, the 35-year-old has a third gold medal of Paris 2024 and the eighth of her Olympic career — tying Birgit Fischer’s Olympic canoeing record. Speaking after the race, Carrington said:

💬 “I just turn up to do my best, love the paddling, love the racing. Always wanting to perform my best and thrive for my best has also given me so much joy.”

Hungary have a third canoeing medal with Tamara Csipes taking silver, as Emma Aastrand Jorgensen becomes Denmark’s most decorated woman in Olympic history with four medals and her bronze.

The men’s 102kg weightlifting final is in progress, with USA athlete Wes Kitts done for his effort.

Kitts lifted 172kg in the snatch after failing at 177kg for his third attempt. Then into the clean and jerk, Kitts manages 202kg.

There will be no medal though, with Kitts sixth and Armenia’s Garik Karapetyan in pole position to take gold.

• Time: 3:29pm ET (gold medal battle), 9:29pm in Paris
• TV: E! and Peaco*ck

After the B-girl competition yesterday, it’s time for the B-boy breaking event today.

Just like the B-girls, the B-boys do a round robin before quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. Once a breaker advances to the knockout stage, it takes three straight battle wins to get the gold medal.

Florida native Victor Montalvo, known as “B-boy Victor,” and Houston’s Jeffrey Louis, “B-boy Jeffro,” qualified for the U.S.

Montalvo, 30, most recently won a gold medal at the 2023 world championships and is currently the highest-ranked American men’s breaker in the world.

The 29-year-old Louis finished fourth in the Olympic qualifying standings to clinch his spot.

So much for the notion of Serbia’s men’s basketball team having a Team USA hangover.

Just two days after their crushing loss to the Americans in an Olympic semifinal for the ages, when they lost despite playing so well that American coach Steve Kerr deemed their performance the “perfect” game, three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic and his countrymen cruised to a 93-83 win over Germany in the bronze medal game on Saturday.

Jokic was dominant yet again, as the Denver Nuggets star finished with a triple-double (19 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 assists). Bogdan Bogdanovic, the Serbian team captain and the program’s all-time leading scorer who plays for the Atlanta Hawks, had 16 points. Serbian guard Vasilije Micic also had 19 points.

And yet again, as was the case against Team USA, the Serbians showed the basketball world that they have one of the best programs on the planet.

France is having itself one heck of a home Olympics. As of this writing, they sit on 56 medals overall, which is easily a modern record for the French. (The only Olympics in which they won more was the 1900 Paris Games, which had a disproportionate number of French athletes and a much smaller international field.)

They also have 14 gold medals, one off their modern record of 15 set at the 1996 Atlanta Games. They will have several chances to surpass that mark today and tomorrow.

In addition to the slew of individual events still going on in cycling, sport climbing, track and field and more, the French men’s volleyball, women’s handball, and men’s and women’s basketball teams are all in gold-medal games this weekend.

The men’s volleyball team is the first to give it a go, starting in 15 minutes against Poland here at Paris South Arena, with the French fans filing in.

What drama at Le Golf National!

Switzerland’s Morgane Metraux, who has led pretty much the entirety of this tournament, finds water with her tee shot on the very first hole.

And to make it even worse for the Swiss, New Zealand’s Lydia Ko — the joint-leader who also starts her fourth and final round on nine under — smashes her opening tee shot straight down the middle.

Ko is now expertly placed to move into the solo lead. The 27-year-old is attempting to complete a set of Olympic medals in Paris, having won silver at Rio 2016 and bronze at Tokyo 2020.

South Korea has just ended their long wait for a table tennis medal.

The country has won bronze in the women’s team event, with Lee Eunhye, Jeon Jihee and the doubles duo of Jeon and Shin Yubin all emerging victorious in their matches with Germany to secure a 3-0 victory to claim bronze.

It is South Korea’s first table tennis Olympic medal since Beijing 2008.