DPA
Paris
American Gabby Thomas lived up to her top billing as she claimed Olympic 200 metres gold ahead of 100m winner Julien Alfred of St Lucia.
Season leader Thomas surged away on the home straight for gold in 21.83 seconds, after bronze at Tokyo 2020 and silver at last year’s world championships.
Alfred took silver in 22.08 and Brittany Brown bronze for the US in 22.20.
Canada completed a hammer throw double when Camryn Rogers won the women’s event after Ethan Katzberg topped the men’s competition.
World champion Miltiadis Tentoglou got back to back men’s long jump gold for Greece, and the women’s 3,000m steeplechase also saw the world champion on top, in the form of Bahrain’s Winfred Yavi.
Hocker gets shock
1500m gold
Cole Hocker was a shock gold medallist for the United States in the men’s Olympic 1,500 metres where top favourite Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway failed to medal in fourth.
Tokyo 2020 winner Ingebrigtsen led from the start until the home straight where he started to fade.
Briton Josh Kerr, who beat Ingebrigtsen for the 2022 world title, moved ahead on the outside, but Hocker then came storming down on the inside for an improbable gold in an Olympic record 3 minutes 27.65 seconds.
Kerr got silver .14 behind in a British record 3:27.79 and the bronze went to the US again as Yared Nuguse followed another one-hudredths back after also surging past Ingebrigtsen who missed the podium by almost half a second.
Dutch win back-to-back team cycling sprint gold
Pre-race favourites the Netherlands broke the world record twice on their way to back-to-back Olympic men’s team sprint cycling gold on Tuesday.
In a repeat of the result from the Tokyo Games, the Dutch trio of Harrie Lavreysen, Jeffrey Hoogland and Roy van den Berg beat Britain in the final.
They broke their own world record in the first round and then again in the final, winning in 40.949 seconds, almost a second up on Team GB’s Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe and Hamish Turnbull.
Although beaten in the final, there were smiles and celebrations from the British squad, who had been well aware of the task they faced against this all-conquering Dutch team, who have won the world title in five of the last six years.
Australia beat France to earn bronze.