Olympic gymnastics 2024: Live updates and results as Simone Biles leads USA to gold

The 2024 Olympic Games is underway in Paris, where the United States are once again favourites to top the medal table at the end of the 17-day festival of sport.

The USA have finished on top of the table at 18 of the 29 summer Olympics, including the very first in Athens in 1896, and six of the past seven stretching back to America’s home Games in Atlanta in 1996.

Training had been cancelled on Sunday and Monday and the men’s race, which had been due to start at 8am local time on Tuesday, has been moved to Wednesday.

It will take place at 10.45am local time after the women’s race at 8am.

“We know that there’s going to be some E coli exposure, so I just try to increase my E coli threshold by exposing myself to a bit of E coli in day-to-day life,” American triathlete Seth Rider said this week, in an actual quote from an actual Olympian. “And it’s backed by science. Proven methods. Just little things throughout your day, like not washing your hands after you go to the bathroom.”

In what has become one of the more bizarre stories of these Olympic Games, professional athletes are upping their intake of faecal bacteria for marginal gain. Rider’s meticulous preparation may yet be of no use: on Tuesday morning he would have woken at around 4am ready for the Olympic triathlon event only to discover that it had been postponed by 26 hours because the Seine failed to meet hygiene levels required for swimming.

Jack Draper criticised Olympic organisers for making players drink “hot water” after wilting in a second-round loss to seventh seed Taylor Fritz.

The 22-year-old began very well but, in the full heat of the sun and with temperatures well over 30 degrees, his challenge faltered and he eventually fell to a 6-7 (3) 6-3 6-2 defeat to end British singles hopes.

A lack of physical durability has been Draper’s Achilles heel and he admitted that he was not able to handle the conditions having so far played through a cool European summer.

Olympic days like these were never meant to happen to Lee Morton.

Thanks to an olive branch from head coach Paul Revington, a willingness to evolve his game and a whole heap of natural ability, Morton is now the toast of Team GB having struck a stunning brace in the final five minutes to earn a dramatic 2-2 draw with Netherlands.

Israeli judokas are being snubbed by rivals at the Paris Olympics, with two athletes refusing the traditional handshake that is considered an important show of respect, while an Algerian competitor has been accused of deliberately failing a weigh-in to avoid a contest entirely.

Nurali Emomali of Tajikistan took to the mat for his bout with Israel’s Barch Shmailov, but walked off without shaking hands after winning their contest. Emomali’s snub followed Morocco’s Abderrahmane Boushita, who also refused to shake hands with Shmailov.

The 2024 Olympics in Paris officially begins with the opening ceremony on Friday 26 July, setting off a two-and-a-half-week festival of sport which comes to an end on Sunday 11 August.

Three years on from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games, Paris 2024 will see a new sport, breakdancing (or breaking), added to the mix. Other modern additions like 3×3 basketball, BMX, surfing, skateboarding and climbing all retain their spots in the schedule, but karate and baseball have been dropped.

In the early hours of this morning it was revealed that the men’s triathlon event, which was due to take place today, had been postponed due to poor water quality in the River Seine.

It is now set to be held on Wednesday at 9.45am BST after the women’s event, which is scheduled to start at 7am.

Final tests of the water will be taken at 2.30am to see if the events can still go ahead.

After winning a bronze medal in the men’s 100m backstroke at the Paris Olympics, US swimmer Ryan Murphy got some unexpected news from his wife.

Standing in the crowd, wife Bridget Konttinen held up a sign with the words: “Ryan it’s a girl!”

He was later spotted in the stands hugging and sharing a kiss with Konttinen, celebrating their gender reveal.

“I was walking back around and Bridget was holding up a sign… That was the first time I heard the gender,” Murphy said, according to the Associated Press.

“We both thought it was going to be a boy. And everyone we were talking to, they thought it was going to be a boy.”

After the yelling and the leaping, the hugging and the sheer disbelief, Andy Murray returned to his seat and acted as if he had found a moment of silence amid the bedlam. Head in his hands, he tried to process the previous minute where his career teetered on the brink and then came roaring back once more. He can’t believe this. Can we? Not a chance.

His Olympics show with Dan Evans goes on and the last dance gets another turn. As thrilling as the last time, as fraught with tension, two more match points saved to extend a career by at least two more days.

Because why not? Murray is making up the rules now. When you’ve already saved five match points and seen the end, you are playing with house money, even if it is potentially the final match of your career.