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French Polynesian Kauli Vaast won the gold medal in men’s surfing while Caroline Marks from the United States won the women’s surfing gold medal on Monday at the Paris Olympics in Tahiti.
Cheers and tears erupted from boats floating near the wave and crowds of spectators along the shore as the men’s final match ended in the afternoon. Vaast pumped his arms into the air in victory after beating Jack Robinson from Australia, who received the silver medal.
“I don’t really realize it, but I just made history,” said Vaast. “I can’t be prouder to represent Tahiti and France at home.”
The women’s gold medal match ended about thirty minutes later, with Marks beating Tatiana Weston-Webb from Brazil, who was awarded the silver medal.
“Your whole life goes into a moment like this,” Marks said with a gold medal hanging around her neck. “It’s beyond all my wildest dreams.”
For the bronze medals, Gabriel Medina from Brazil and Johanne Defay from France won after beating Alonso Correa from Peru and Brisa Hennessy from Costa Rica, respectively.
“Chopes gave me so many good waves, so many good results. So I can’t complain,” said Medina, using a common nickname for Teahupo’o.
Medalists — some in bare feet — stepped onto the Olympic podium near the ocean as crowds gathered to cheer and take photographs. Roosters ran along the grass while young local surfers called the names of the athletes as they walked by.
All winners of the Paris Olympics surfing competition are first-time Olympic medalists, after defending Olympic women’s champion Carissa Moore of the United States — who won at the Tokyo Games, where Olympic surfing debuted — was beaten in the quarterfinals on Thursday.
“Obviously I’m really sad to not be a part of finals day, to get to represent my home and my family one more time, but I’m really grateful,” Moore said after her loss. “I just hope that at the end of the day, I can encourage whoever is watching, win or lose, don’t be afraid to go into it fearlessly and don’t be afraid to fail.”
The final day of the Paris Olympics surfing competition began Monday morning after two days of delays due to unfavorable conditions. In the morning, conditions were smaller than the heavy, barrel-shaped waves Teahupo’o is famed for and that were seen during part of the men’s competition the week before.
But by the afternoon waves grew larger and more frequent, giving athletes a chance to impress judges with the time they spent inside the barrels. At one point during the competition, a whale jumped out of the water while surfers went head to head.
Six of the eight surfers who made it to the semifinals represented different nations. French Polynesian, Peruvian, Australian, and other national flags flew from boats near the waves.
While not every surfer who competed was able to bring home a medal, many agreed that the second-ever Olympics surfing competition — filled with viral photographs, record-breaking scores, and hours of stunning video footage broadcast to viewers around the world — helped promote the sport.
“Everyone’s watching and paying attention,” said Medina, who said he gained millions of social media followers after a photo of him floating in the sky next to his surfboard while bailing out of a wave went viral during the competition. “I think surfing wins”
Luana Alonso has been making all kinds of headlines at the Olympics in Paris — but it has little to do with her actual performance.
The Paraguayan swimmer has been enjoying the spotlight and has been posting snaps on social media from all over the City of Lights. But there’s now one place where she is no longer welcome: The Olympic Village.
According to Larissa Schaerer, the head of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee, Alonso was “creating an inappropriate atmosphere” around the team and was asked to leave the athletes’ dorms.
“Her presence is creating an inappropriate atmosphere within Team Paraguay,” Schaerer said in a statement.
“We thank her for proceeding as instructed, as it was of her own free will that she did not spend the night in the athletes’ village.”
It appears that Alonso took the instructions to heart and left France. She posted a video earlier on Monday while riding in a car, approaching what appeared to be a U.S. border crossing.
Alonso, 20, competed in the women’s 100-meter butterfly on July 27 but finished sixth in her heat with a time of one minute 3.09 seconds — much slower than her time at the Tokyo Games three years ago — and didn’t qualify for the semifinals.
After getting bounced, she abruptly announced her retirement from competitive swimming on her Instagram account.
“It’s official! I’m retiring from swimming, thank you all so much for your support!” Alonso wrote. “Sorry, Paraguay. I just have to say thank you!”
She also shared an emotional message in a follow-up post.
“Swimming: Thank you for allowing me to dream, you taught me to fight, to try, perseverance, sacrifice, discipline, and many more things,” she wrote, including several photos of her competing at the Games this year.
“I gave you part of my life and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world because I lived the best experiences of my life, you gave me thousands of joys, and friends from other countries that I will always carry in my heart, unique opportunities. It’s not goodbye, it’s see you soon.”
Alonso didn’t pack up and leave France, though, since her retirement. And instead of being a team player and cheering on her compatriots, she opted instead to visit Disneyland Paris – which upset the country’s Olympic leadership.
Alonso had garnered quite a bit of attention heading into the Summer Games, going viral for posting a picture of a tattoo on her hip of the Olympic rings after qualifying for Paris.
She has also shared many steamy swimwear shots with about 560,000 followers on Instagram.
Simon Biles has dazzled in Paris, standing out as one of the stars of this summer's Olympic Games.
The superstar gymnast secured as many as four medals, winning three golds and one silver to bounce back from her forgettable Tokyo 2020 Games in style.
The smiley and joyful Biles has been a joy to watch and, unsurprisingly, she has dominated television coverage, with cameras not missing a beat of her performances across all disciplines.
But just as Biles enjoys more superb performances, there is now talk that she will retire, with many suggesting she will not still be around to compete in her home Games at LA28.
Biles is now 27 years of age, and she will be 31 by the time the next Games come around. It could be a big ask for the superstar to continue dealing with the pressure of a nation for another four years, while she may even have plans to start family life with her husband Jonathan Owens.
With rumors that Biles will walk away from the sport swirling, there has been plenty of speculation, but one of her closest friends may have let the secret slip.
Biles' closest teammate Jordan Chiles was caught whispering to Biles by the television microphones and cameras: "I'm gonna miss you, man."
A shiny farewell for Biles?
Biles has won four medals at this Olympic Games, including three golds, and that would be some way to finish a superb career that has seen her win seven gold medals, two silvers, and two bronzes overall.
On Monday, she added a silver medal to her collection to make it four, finishing second to Rebeca Andrade on the floor exercise, while she finished fourth in the beam due to a rare slip.
American gymnast Simone Biles didn't get the golden sendoff she sought.
Biles earned silver in the floor exercise finals on Monday - her 11th Olympic medal - after a routine that included a couple of costly steps out of bounds.
Brazil's Rebeca Andrade became the first gymnast to beat Biles in a floor final in a major international competition, posting a score of 14.166 that finished just ahead of Biles at 14.133.
Jordan Chiles, a longtime friend and teammate of Biles, earned the bronze.
The 27-year-old Biles considered the greatest in the history of the sport, wasn't at her usual best during a routine set to music from pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce.
Still, she boosted her medal haul in Paris to four - gold in the team, all-around and vault finals, and a silver that came as a surprise in her signature event.
"I can't be more proud of how I've done," Biles said. "I'm 27 years old walking away from this Games with four medals to add to my collection. Not mad about it."
Biles' medal total (including seven gold, two silver, two bronze) ties Czechoslovakia's Vera Caslavska for the second-most by female gymnast in Olympic history. She missed a chance to add a fifth Paris medal earlier Monday when she fell during the beam final, finishing fifth.
Though she can make it look easy at times, it is not. She thudded to the mat during her floor warm-up and had the balky left calf she tweaked in qualifying last week re-wrapped before she competed.
Her tumbling passes weren't perfect - she stepped out of bounds twice - but her difficulty is usually so far above everyone else that it hardly matters.
Not this time. She received a 7.833 execution score that included 0.6 in deductions for stepping out of bounds, allowing Andrade to win her second Olympic gold.
Still, wearing a red-white-and-blue leotard featuring thousands of crystals, Biles ended nine days of competition in Paris by silencing the critics once and for all who have long derided her for pulling out of multiple events at the Tokyo Games three years ago.
She won four medals in all, just one less than she did eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
Chiles - the last competitor of the day - initially received a 13.666 from judges. After some delay, her total was boosted by 0.1 when she filed an inquiry about the difficulty component of her score. That pushed Chiles past Romanians Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea and into third.
Biles said after winning the vault final on Saturday that she noticed her haters were "really quiet now, so that's strange."
As opposed to the constant roar of support that followed Biles wherever she went inside Bercy Arena, which has become a hub for celebrities from across the spectrum - including former NFL great Tom Brady on Monday - whenever she performs.
Floor exercise is Biles' signature event, one that allows her to mix boundary-pushing tumbling passes that are the hardest ever done in her sport with charismatic choreography that works together to produce perhaps the most exciting 75 seconds in her sport.
The excitement, however, was tinged a bit by an uncharacteristic lapse in execution.
The routine ends with Biles blowing a kiss, a little wink that she has incorporated into her program in various forms for years.
Whether it served as a kiss goodbye remains anyone's guess. Maybe even Biles'.
She has stayed relatively quiet on what lies ahead for her beyond the Paris Games, though she did nudge the door open a little for a possible return when the Olympics shift to Los Angeles in 2028.
"Never say never," Biles said after claiming her second Olympic vault title earlier in the Games. "Next Olympics are at home. So you just never know. I am getting really old."
She will be 31 then, an age when most gymnasts have long since retired. Yet Biles is redefining that adage in real-time, and considering the gap that still exists between herself and nearly everyone else in the sport - save for Andrade, who pushed Biles as hard as she's been pushed in nearly a decade - anything is possible.
Her floor silver came about an hour after a beam final in which half of the eight women in the field found themselves hopping off in the middle of their routine after losing their balance.
Biles included. She lost her balance at the end of her acro series and received a score of 13.100 to wind up fifth, tied with teammate Sunisa Lee.
Like Biles, Lee saw her hopes for gold end in the middle of her routine when she fell during the same part of her routine as Biles.
Afterward, the two Olympic champions and longtime friends who have a staggering 17 Olympic medals between them commiserated over the weird vibe inside an oddly silent arena that is usually throbbing with music at all times.
"It adds to the stress, just because it's like you, yes, you're the only one up there," said Lee, who will take some time off before making any decision about her future. "So I was feeling the pressure."
Alice D'Amato of Italy took the gold on the beam with a score of 14.366. Zhou Yaqin of China earned silver with a 14.100, just ahead of bronze medalist Manila Esposito of Italy. Italy, which won silver behind the U.S. in the team competition, had never medaled on beam before.
The awards podium stand has long served as a second home for Biles during a career that includes 41 medals in major international competitions. A number that may never be broken and - who knows? - could possibly even be added to in Los Angeles.
Simone Biles has been one of the stars of this summer's Olympics in Paris. With four medals including three golds, bouncing back in style from the frustrating Olympics she endured in Tokyo.
After struggling in Japan, Biles was determined not only to succeed in Paris but to do it with a smile, making history and lighting up the gymnastics arena with her positive energy.
On Monday, her positive energy wasn't quite enough to secure another gold, with the US superstar missing out on the medals in the individual beam, while she finished second in the individual floor exercise.
Rival Rebeca Andrade took gold, but far from displaying any bitterness over the Brazilian winning her first-ever floor exercise gold and her second-ever Olympic gold overall, Biles showed her class with a special gesture.
When the athletes took to the podium to receive their rewards, Biles and US teammate Jordan Chiles - who took bronze - took to their knees and bowed down to Andrade at the top of the podium.
It was a special gesture, and one Andrade will surely appreciate, especially given it came from Biles, who is regularly her main competitor at the very top of women's gymnastics.
Mutual praise
Both Biles and Andrade have praised each other in the past, and Biles said after the Brazilian's gold on Monday: "Rebeca's so amazing... she's queen!"
The US superstar has previously joked: "I don't wanna compete with Rebeca no more, I'm tired." Meanwhile, Andrade has said: "Simone is the best, and she brings out the best of me."
There have been rumors that Andrade will walk away from the individual all-around event, but nothing has been confirmed at this stage, and she will surely enjoy her success before making any decisions over her future.
The pole vaulter they call “Mondo” really can put on a show.
With the rest of the action at the Olympic track wrapped up for the evening and the crowd of 80,000 at the Stade de France still on their feet, Armand Duplantis rested the pole on his right shoulder and took a deep breath. Then, he lifted up that long piece of carbon fiber and took off down the runway and into the night sky.
Another Olympic gold medal already was his. When he came crashing down into the padding on the other side of that sky-high, pink-tinted bar, so was another world record.
Duplantis, the Louisiana-born 24-year-old who competes for his mother’s native Sweden, cleared 6.25 meters (20 feet, 6 inches) to break the world record for the ninth time — but the first time on his sport’s grandest stage.
His next move was a sprint to the stands to hug his girlfriend and celebrate his record and second Olympic gold with all his friends and family wearing yellow and blue. The country’s king and queen were on hand, as well, to witness Sweden’s latest history-making leap into the pole vault pit.
“It’s hard to understand, honestly,” he said. “If I don’t beat this moment in my career, then I’m pretty OK with that. I don’t think you can get much better than what just happened.”
It felt only right that the Duplantis drama came with Noah Lyles in the building.
A night after the American sprint star electrified track with a .005-second victory in the men’s 100 meters, Lyles was on hand to receive his gold medal and watch Duplantis electrify field to the tune of 6.25 meters — about the height of a typical two-story building.
The drama played out over a half hour at the end of the night, long after a slow-and-strange women’s 5,000 meters had wrapped up and after Keely Hodgkinson had captured the first track medal for Britain at this meet in the 800, the evening’s last race.
That usually signals a time for folks to start heading for the exits.
But Mondo’s encore was worth staying for, and most everyone did.
“Mondo is an extraordinary jumper because of four factors,” said American Sam Kendricks, who finished second. “One, he’s got a great coach for a long time. He’s had a lot of time to do it. He’s got great equipment and an understanding of the event. He’s a fan of sport, and he’s got God’s hand on his back.”
By winning a second straight gold medal and breaking the record for the ninth time — each time by one centimeter — Duplantis is now next to, if not above, Sergei Bubka as the greatest ever in this event.
Duplantis is in the conversation with America’s Ryan Crouser, a world-record holder and three-time gold medalist in shot put, as among the most dominant athletes on the field side of this sport.
And when it comes to delivering great theatre, as he showed once again, Duplantis is in a class of his own.
After he sealed the victory over Kendricks, then captured the Olympic record by clearing 6.10 meters, Duplantis had the bar moved to one centimeter higher than the world-record height.
Following his first miss, he used a break while Lyles was receiving the gold medal for his 100-meter victory, to study video on a tablet with his parents, who met decades ago while they were both on the LSU track and field team.
Another miss ensued, then another long break.
The fans clapped in rhythm and sang along to the French song “Alleur de Feu” — “Light the Fire” — getting ready for Mondo’s leap into history.
A home-grown talent, Duplantis learned this sport on a pole vault pit his parents dug in their backyard in Lafayette, Louisiana.
During long afternoons of jumping in that pit, Duplantis often envisioned himself going for a world record on his last jump at the Olympics.
Maybe not in the equation — the parties that world record and Olympic title would set off. An hour after the stadium cleared, the song “Dancing Queen” by the Swedish group ABBA was playing loudly and proudly outside the stadium.
“For it to actually happen the way that it did and for me to put the right jump together at the right time, it’s just, like, how do you explain it?” he said. “It’s bigger than words for me.”
Chebet of Kenya wins wild women’s 5,000 meters
Duplantis was the closing act on a night that included an upset by Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet in the women’s 5,000 meters. One of the world’s best distance runners, Chebet’s Kenyan teammate Faith Kipyegon, ended up with silver, but only after winning an appeal of her initial disqualification for trading elbows with world-record holder Gudaf Tsegay.
The appeal left Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands with the bronze medal. Hassan will also race in the 10,000 and marathon, trying to duplicate her three distance medals from the Tokyo Games.
Lyles returns to the track
Lyles returned to the track the day after his memorable win in the 100 meters to start the quest for his second gold, this one in the 200.
He won his opening heat in 20.19 seconds, then stuck around to receive his gold medal.
He said he did it all on only a little more than 4 hours of sleep.
“I had to stop watching the race,” he said of his decision to call it a night at 2:45 a.m. after his win. “Throughout the day, it’s kind of just been meandering trying to get the body started, jump-starting it.”
Back-to-back for US discus thrower Val Allman
Val Allman won her second straight Olympic gold with a throw of 69.50 meters to easily top China’s Feng Bin.
The medals from Allman and Kendricks gave the U.S. 11 so far in the meet, including three golds.
Hodgkinson brings first gold of Olympic track to Britain
Keely Hodgkinson captured Britain’s first gold medal of the track meet, winning the 800 meters in 1:56.72.
This gold goes with the silver she took behind Athing Mu in 2021. Mu did not qualify for the Olympics after getting tripped up during the U.S. trials.
Track cyclists from Britain have become accustomed to standing on the top step of the podium at the Olympics.
Just not in the women’s team sprint.
In each of the four Summer Games, since the event made its debut in Beijing, their powerful and often-favored teams had come up short — not just of the top step but any step, a frustrating streak of letdowns that they carried into the Paris Olympics.
So when Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell, and Emma Finucane shattered the world record while beating New Zealand in a head-to-head showdown for gold Monday night, the enormity of the moment hit each of them in a meaningful way.
“It’s been a crazy journey,” Finucane said. “It’s just surreal standing on that top step, singing the anthem. It’s such a pinch-me moment. And I think going up to that start line for the final, we knew we could do it, but we had to execute. And I think we did that. And looking up at the boards and seeing all the GB flags in the crowd, I couldn’t believe we did it.”
In the three-lap race, the British trio trailed Rebecca Petch, Shaane Fulton, and Ellesse Andrews after the first 250 meters. But they quickly pulled ahead after the second lap, then blitzed the last to finish in 45.196 seconds, earning their nation’s first medal in the event on a hot, humid night inside the Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
“I mean, the competition is hot,” Marchant said. “It takes a world record to become an Olympic champion.”
The two fastest winning teams from head-to-head heats advanced to race for gold. New Zealand clinched its spot when it set a world record against Poland, and Britain joined the Kiwis when it broke that record against Canada.
Turned out the British would break their own mark again about an hour later.
Germany also briefly held the world record after its heat race against Mexico. But the team of Pauline Grabosch, Lea Friedrich, and Emma Hinze that has dominated the event since the Tokyo Games was left to race for the bronze medal.
They beat the Netherlands to extend their podium streak to all four times the event has been contested in the Olympics.
The reason so many records fell is that the women’s team sprint changed after Tokyo to mirror the men’s event, which means three riders on the track rather than two and a whole new set of marks.
And the Chinese, who had been defending Olympic champs, have been slow to adapt. They had a false start in qualifying, then finished well behind the Dutch in their heat to miss the medals entirely.
In other events on the opening night of track cycling, the defending champion Dutch men’s sprint team of Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen, and Jeffrey Hoogland broke their own Olympic record with a time of 41.279 seconds in qualifying. The British team of Ed Lowe, Jack Carlin, and Hamish Turnbull qualified second and the Australian team was third.
The Netherlands, which has won five of the past six world titles in the three-lap sprint, will aim for gold on Tuesday night.
Lavreysen is shooting for three gold medals in the velodrome after coming up just short of that haul in Tokyo. The 27-year-old powerhouse also won gold in the individual sprint three years ago but could only manage bronze in the keirin.
In the men’s team pursuit, the British squad that had its streak of three consecutive Olympic gold medals stopped by Italy and Denmark at the Tokyo Games sent a warning shot toward their biggest rivals in qualifying.
The quartet of Ethan Hayter, Oliver Wood, Dan Bigham, and Ethan Vernon covered the 4-kilometer distance in 3:43.241, which stood as the best time through several other efforts. The only team to surpass them was the Australians, who surprisingly led qualifying in 3:42.958 — not far off Italy’s world record set in Tokyo.
“We had a bit of a disappointing disaster in Tokyo with our crash,” Australia’s Sam Welsford said, “so it was a lot of redemption to come here, and we have a really good shot at it. We nailed the process and the preparation.”
The reigning Olympic champion Italy went last but was never on the same pace, finishing fourth in qualifying. The world champ Danes were third-fastest behind Australia and Britain, stopping the clock in 3:43.690 ahead of Tuesday’s head races.
“We didn’t go flat out, not really. We have to be a bit careful,” Italy’s Jonathan Milan said. “I’m pretty positive. Now we have to rest as much as possible and come back tomorrow as fresh as we can.”