Agency :
France’s capital city is set to rock to a sporting beat on Saturday as the Olympic Games get underway in earnest on the back of an opening ceremony as dazzling as it was rainswept.
After a tumultuous Friday, which started with a pre-dawn attack by saboteurs on France’s high-speed train network, the focus now turns to gold medals and sporting excellence.
No fewer than 14 will be up for grabs as day one promises action across multiple sports: four golds in swimming, two each in cycling, fencing, and judo, and one each in diving, skateboarding, shooting, and rugby sevens.
The swimming gets off to a flying start at La Defense Arena where Australia’s Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus bids to retain her 400-meter freestyle title against American Katie Ledecky, the 2016 Rio champion, and Canadian wunderkind Summer McIntosh.
Coming three years after Titmus beat Ledecky in a thriller at the Tokyo Games, the final could be Paris’s candidate for “race of the century” if all three qualify.
With former world champions Sam Short and Elijah Winnington in the men’s 400 freestyle and a peerless women’s 4×100 freestyle relay team, Australia could emerge with three out of four gold medals in the pool on day one.
With Caeleb Dressel in the driving seat, the United States will bid for a third successive gold in the men’s 4×100 relay against strong challenges from the Australians and the Pan Zhanle-powered China team.
Over at the cycling, Italy’s Filippo Ganna will go head-to-head with Belgium’s prodigy Remco Evenepoel in a much-anticipated individual time trial, with Britain’s Joshua Tarling the other top contender.
In the women’s event, American Chloe Dygert is among the main favorites, having shown with her 2023 world title that she has recovered from Epstein-Barr virus diagnosed in early 2022, which was followed by heart surgery to treat accelerating beats.
Her main rivals will be Australia’s Grace Brown and Britain’s Anna Henderson, with the Netherlands’ triple world champion Ellen van Dijk’s form a big question mark after she broke her ankle in June.
The first gold medal of the Games is likely to be at the shooting range in the 10-meter Air Pistol Mixed Team event.
Shooting powerhouse China will look to make an early statement at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre through their sharpshooters, who have made a habit of winning the first gold of the Olympics.
Over the next week or so, the United States will fancy their chances, with three-times gold medallist Vincent Hancock leading their charge.
Fiji will hope to extend their stranglehold on the men’s rugby sevens as they seek their third successive title, but there is an otherwise fresh look to the semi-final lineup at the Stade de France on Saturday.
The Fijians have won every match they have played since the sport was added to the Olympics in 2016 and will start as strong favorites to extend that remarkable streak against Australia, who are in the semis for the first time.
It is also new territory for France, who failed to even make the Tokyo event but came into their own Games on a high having won the new end-of-season Grand Final.
They play 2016 bronze medallists South Africa, who shocked New Zealand in the quarter-finals having sneaked into the competition as the final qualifiers by winning the repechage.