Olympique Daily: At sixes and Sevens

A (free) wrap of some of biggest stories on the eve of the opening ceremony

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A newsletter that is definitely Olympic, but not really “daily”.

It must be deflating beyond words to have your Olympic campaign shattered before the first boats head down the Seine for the opening ceremony, but that’s what the All Blacks Sevens team faces after falling 7-14 in their quarter-final to South Africa this morning.

It’s a hinky old format when you meet a team in the first-round of the knockouts who you’ve already played in pool play, but that’s by the by — every contender turns up knowing that they have to win two knockout matches in a row to guarantee a medal, and three to take home gold. Falling at the first major hurdle leads to nowhere but a few sleepless nights.

In many respects New Zealand outplayed South Africa — shades of another match of this same ground less than a year ago — but they were rattled by the BlitzBoks in-your-face defence (sound familiar) and on several occasions breaks were unable to be finished off because they did not have enough players with pure gas.

As it stands, one silver medal from three men’s Olympic campaigns is a meagre return given the team’s stellar history in the format. The programme will need to ask itself some serious questions about the sorts of (winged-heeled?) athletes it needs to win in Los Angeles.

A lot of pressure will now fall on the Black Ferns sevens to justify the government funding (and, frankly, it’s ridiculous that rugby, the richest sport in the country, gets taxpayer handouts anyway, but that’s a different story).

Read More: Sevens campaign ended by South Africa in quarter-finals.

Frustration was manifest on [Andrew] Knewstubb’s face moments after the final whistle. Asked to assess where it had all gone wrong, the Tokyo medallist could barely muster a word, his long silence saying it all.

Finally, voice quiet and the emotions of the match impossible to suppress, he said: “We lost. It wasn’t good enough. We had our chances but it wasn’t good enough.”

That succinct summation was echoed by captain Dylan Collier, confronted by the reality of his campaign ending before the Olympic torch had been lit.

“It’s gonna hurt for a little bit,” Collier said. “We just couldn’t execute when it counted.”

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The Canada spying scandal has claimed the coach, with Bev Priestman  stood down for the remainder of the Olympic campaign. 

The Canadian Olympic Committee has removed the coach of the Canadian women’s team after staff members were caught spying on the Football Ferns’ training sessions ahead of their opening match at the Olympic Games in France.

Priestman, who had initially been suspended by Canada Soccer, has now been told by the Canadian Olympic Committee she is no longer welcome to be in charge of the team at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Andy Spence will now coach Canada for the remainder of the Games.

The sport in Canada is reeling after revelations that spying was used to glean information on opponents before the olympics. Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue put out a statement:

“Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend women’s national soccer team head coach, Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of [an] independent external review.”

There is still no word as to whether Canada will be docked the three points it won by beating the Football Ferns 2-1 this morning.

Read more: “Straight up embarrassing” - Football Ferns on drone scandal.

[Football Ferns] captain Katie Bowen expressed her disappointment at the situation, which captured headlines around the world.

“It’s just such a shock, and my heart goes out to the Canadian team as well cause we know those girls weren’t involved and that’s just straight up cheating and embarrassing,” said Bowen.

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It’s a good point and why I’d be wary of especially punitive measures, like kicking them out of the tournament. We can dance on a pinhead debating whether it matters whether you know or not because you still benefit from the cheating, but whatever the final sanctions, there has been a real human cost to all this.

As an aside, we watch so much night sport now that I had almost forgotten how annoying it was to watch a game where one side of the field is in shadow and the other in bright light. Either that or the production was just particularly poor.

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It’s really, really annoying for those of us who couldn’t wait to see the best cyclist in the world have a crack at the road race, one of the blue-riband events of the Olympics, but there is something undeniably romantic about Tadej Pogacar’s withdrawal.

The Giro and Tour de France champion admitted that he wasn’t telling the whole truth when he cited extreme fatigue as the reason for his Paris no-show. It was an understandable excuse, though it looked a little flimsy when he instead travelled to the Netherlands to take part in a criterium just days after winning his sixth stage on Le Tour.

Pogacar said at that event that the Slovenian federation’s decision not to select his girlfriend, Urska Zigart, for the Olympics was a factor in his decision.

From the Guardian:

“It’s not the main reason, but for sure it didn’t help. I think she deserves her spot. She’s the double national champion in the road race and time trial.”

Zigart is her nation’s highest-ranked rider and Pogacar has long been a highly visible presence in support of her career in the women’s peloton. “She’s the only woman cyclist in Slovenia that ever achieved top 10 in week-long World Tour races,” he told the Dutch broadcaster NOS. “She did great in the last two years winning points for Slovenia and, without her, they wouldn’t have two spots in the [Olympic] road race.”

National coach Gorazd Penko is not a popular man in the tiny Balkan nation after instead selecting Urska Pintar, who finished second at this year’s Slovenian national championship, 11 minutes behind Zigart.

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I tend to approach anything in the Daily Mail with caution, but this Ian Herbert piece does direct a bit of righteous anger in the right place.

 Since Russia’s invasion, 462 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed and Magazova’s report details the stories of five, with devastating understatement. There’s Alina Perehudova, a 14-year-old weightlifter who had been preparing for the 2023 European Championships when she and her mother, leaving their house in Mariupol, were hit by shrapnel from an explosion and died instantly. Trampolinist Anastasia Ihnatenko had just rented an apartment in Dnipro with her husband and their one-year-old son when a Russian missile hit the building and killed her.

They and many more will be remembered by their compatriots and friends bearing Ukraine’s flag to the banks of the Seine. Look out for that contingent - who arrive in France with hopes of perhaps 20 medals - because their grace and class shame an International Olympic Committee (IOC) which has handed Russian athletes the chance to compete at these games, and Putin the chance to exploit the propaganda potential if they medal.

The IOC’s spineless cover for allowing 19 Russians in is that they may neither bear their country’s name and flag, nor hear its national anthem. In an insult to our intelligence, they tell us that analysis of these athletes’ social media posts and public statements prove they have “no active support for the war.”

A study by Global Rights Compliance, a human rights group, suggests that Russian cyclist Alena Ivanchenko has liked several pro-war posts on social media and that her tennis-playing compatriot Elena Vesnina has validated posts about “military feats” of Russian soldiers killing Ukrainians and posts displaying the pro-war ‘Z’ symbol.

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Not a good few days for the sport of equestrian.

From the Telegraph ($):

The Paris Olympics have been hit by fresh claims of equine abuse, with show jumping medal contender Max Kuehner of Austria subject to criminal proceedings in Germany for allegedly hitting his horse’s legs with a bar to make it jump higher.

Kuehner, the world No 3 in jumping, stands accused by the Munich II public prosecutor’s office of violating the German Animal Welfare Act by engaging in “active bar jumping” or “barring”. The technique is more commonly known as “rapping”, where a pole is used to smack the horse’s legs over a practice jump, forcing it to lift. It has been banned in Germany since May 2023.

According to the Austrian Equestrian Federation, Kuehner, 50, who is scheduled to compete in Versailles in both the individual and team jumping competitions, denies wrongdoing. “We can confirm, based on everything we have observed during the years of working with Max, that the way his horses are kept, trained and presented is of the highest quality,” the governing body told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

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Fantastic Sport Review guide here to one of the banes of my life: the Olympic vox pop.

Read the whole thing, but here’s two of my faves:

Parents of athletes - you’re 100% getting on TV. Most awkward when an athlete competes over multiple days and we check in with mum and dad frequently, with everything getting increasingly stilted thanks to folks back home sending feedback on Facebook messenger.

Boys on the piss - after a long day singing Slice of Heaven, trying to start mexican waves and drinking 43 beers, tired and emotional boys groups are TV gold. There’s a lot of shouting and interrupting, along with ample chat about immediately getting resuming being on the piss at the interview’s cessation, but not a lot else.

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You’re right you know, I never did post about the All Blacks test win against Fiji in San Diego, “discovered by the Germans in 1904” according to local newsman Ron Burgundy, and there’s a reason for that.

The fact the test was played in the US didn’t unduly bother me. Of course it would have been better if it was Suva or Lautoka but we can clutch at pearls a bit whenever it comes to the All Blacks making money. Besides, what big name telly stars would they have been able to leverage for edgy content in Fiji? Exactly. Nevertheless, the whole exercise felt incredibly sterile — more an exhibition match than a test match and nothing about it moved me to words, let alone an attempt at cogent analysis.

Billy Proctor was good at centre and Pasilio Tosi, Noah Hotham and Wallace Sititi all did some nice things on debut, but it’s hard to get a true gauge when the line-speed of Fiji’s defence was incomparable to what they faced against England the previous fortnight.

This is a very long-winded way of saying that I am conscious of the fact there is other stuff going on besides the Olympics.

It will not be ignored (well, not all the time), but it might take a back seat for the next fortnight.

KIWIS IN ACTION

(all events are on Sky channels)

I ‘covered’ the Athens opening ceremony. Strange the things you recall and those you forget. I remember there being a lot of water in the ceremony but can’t remember if Nana Mouskouri sang. What a travesty if she didn’t. In Beijing, I think I gave it an air shot altogether, while in London a few of us watched Danny Boyle’s Village Green extravaganza from a pub in King’s Cross. I haven’t seen one since and probably won’t again, but that’s not to stop you…

Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, tomorrow 5.30am

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Day 1 (Saturday evening/ Sunday morning)

Rowing

7pm: Men’s single scull heats (Tom Mackintosh)

8.12pm: Women’s single scull heats (Emma Twigg)

9.30pm: Men’s double scull heats (Robbie Manson/ Jordan Parry)

10pm: Women’s double scull heats (Lucy Spoors/ Brooke Francis)

Equestrian

7.30pm: Eventing - dressage (Clarke Johnstone/ Jonelle Price/ Tim Price)

Swimming

9pm: Women’s 400m freestyle heats (Erika Fairweather, Eve Thomas)

9pm: Women’s 100m butterfly heats (Hazel Ouwehand)

Tennis

10pm: Women's doubles, first round (Erin Routliffe/ Lulu Sun)

Cycling - road

12.30am: Women’s time trial (Kim Cadzow)

2.32am: Men’s time trial (Laurence Pithie)

Canoe - slalom

2am: Women’s K1 heats, run 1 (Luuka Jones)

4.10am: Women’s K1 heats, run 2 (Luuka Jones)

Hockey

3.30am: Men’s pool play (NZ v India)

Football

5am: Men’s group stage (NZ v USA)

Surfing

5am: Men’s round one (Billy Stairmand)

9.48am: Women’s round one (Saffi Vette)

Swimming

6.30am: Women’s 100m butterfly semifinals (Hazel Ouwehand - possible)

6.55am: Women’s 400m freestyle final (Erika Fairweather, Eve Thomas - possible)

DAY 2 (Sunday evening/ Monday morning)

Equestrian

8.30pm: Eventing - cross country 

Rowing

8.30pm: Women’s pair heats (Alana Sherman/ Kate Haines)

9pm: Men’s pair heats (Phillip Wilson/ Dan Williamson)

9.30pm: Women’s lightweight double scull heats (Jackie Kiddle/ Shannon Cox)

10.30pm: Women’s four heats (Spoors/ Waddy/ Gowler/ Williams)

10.50pm: Men’s four heats (Murray/ Ullrich/ Maclean/ Macdonald)

Swimming

9pm: Women’s 200m freestyle heats (Erika Fairweather)

Erika Fairweather. Getty Images

9pm: Men’s 400m individual medley heats (Lewis Clareburt)

9pm: Men’s 100m backstroke heats (Kane Follows)

Tennis

10pm: Women’s doubles, first round (Lulu Sun/ Erin Routliffe)

Sailing

10.13pm: Women’s windfoil races 1-4 (Veerle ten Have)

11.43pm: Men’s windfoil races 1-4 (Josh Armit)

1.35pm: Sailing - women’s 49er FX races 1-3 (Jo Aleh/ Molly Meech)

1.45am: Sailing - men’s 49er races 1-3 ( Isaac McHardie/ Will McKenzie)

Cycling - mountain biking

12.10am: Women’s cross country (Sammie Maxwell)

Artistic gymnastics

12.50am: Women’s individual all-around qualification (Georgia-Rose Brown)

Canoe - slalom

1.30am: Women’s K1 semifinals (Jones -possible)

3.45am: Women’s K1 final (Jones -possible)

Football

3am: Women’s group stage (NZ v Colombia)

Hockey

3.30am: Men’s pool play (NZ v Belgium)

Rugby sevens

4am: Women’s pool stage (NZ v China)

7.30am: Women’s pool stage (NZ v Canada)

Surfing

5am: Women’s second round (Vette -possible)

9.48am: Men’s second round (Stairmand -possible)

Swimming

6.30am: Men’s 400m individual medley final (Clareburt - possible)

6.45am: Women’s 100m butterfly semifinals (Ouwehand -possible)

7.37am: Men’s 100m backstroke semifinals (Follows -possible)

8am: Women’s 200m freestyle semifinals (Fairweather -possible)