What’s happening and when at the Paris Olympics?

The Paris Olympics is into its second week so what better way to plan ahead than with our day-by-day guide – all times BST.

Team GB has named a squad of 327 athletes and UK Sport has set a target of 50 to 70 medals at the Games.

The Games officially opened at a unique and spectacular opening ceremony along the River Seine on Friday, 26 July and will close on Sunday, 11 August.

Day 12: Wednesday, 7 August (23 gold medals)

Gold medal events:

Artistic swimming (team acrobatic routine), athletics (marathon race walk mixed relay, women’s pole vault, men’s discus throw, men’s 400m, men’s 3000m steeplechase), boxing (men’s 63.5kg, men’s 80kg),sailing (men’s dinghy, women’s dinghy, mixed dinghy, mixed multihull), skateboard (men’s park), sport climbing (women’s speed), taekwondo (men’s 58kg, women’s 49kg), track cycling (men’s team pursuit, women’s team pursuit), weightlifting (men’s 61kg, women’s 49kg), wrestling (men’s Greco-Roman 77kg, men’s Greco-Roman 97kg, women’s freestyle 50kg).

Highlights

Matthew Hudson-Smith is considered the centre of a British revival over 400m after GB failed to field an athlete in this event three years ago. Hudson-Smith has come through a series of injuries and mental health struggles to be one of the world’s leading male 400m runners this season. Rivals in his final (20:20) will include American Quincy Hall and Grenada’s Kirani James, one of a six-strong Grenada team at Paris 2024 and the only Grenadian ever to win an Olympic medal (three, including gold at London 2012).

It is team pursuit night at the velodrome – can Team GB recapture some of their track cycling dominance in one of the Olympics’ most exhilarating split-screen events?

Britain’s men did not make it to the final in Tokyo but have already booked a spot in the gold medal race against Australia at 17:33, while the women will be hoping to go one better than the silver they claimed three years ago when their heats get under way at 12:52.

John Gimson and Anna Burnet narrowly missed out on a Tokyo Olympic title in sailing’s mixed Nacra 17 class, a racing catamaran. They are the 2020 and 2021 world champions but their nemeses in this class are Italy’s Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti, who won Tokyo gold and have taken the past three world titles, too. Can Gimson and Burnet find a way past in Paris? The medal race is today.

Meanwhile, Micky Beckett in the single-handed dinghy (the ILCA 7, which you might also know as the Laser), also stands a chance of a medal in the rescheduled men’s final. Beckett was a world silver medallist last year and has since racked up major wins like the Princess Sofia Regatta.

Brit watch

The first round of the men’s 800m (10:55) features Ben Pattison, who won a surprise world bronze medal last year. Team-mate Max Burgin ran Pattison close at June’s British Championships and has previously posted world leading times, but has struggled with injury in recent years. Jake Wightman, who won a European silver medal in 2022, is out with a hamstring injury and has been replaced by Elliot Giles.

In skateboarding, the British are used to the idea that in Sky Brown, the sport has one of Team GB’s youngest stars. But you can be an amazing skateboarder a little later in life, too. Andy Macdonald is on the team at the age of 51, making him the oldest athlete in Olympic skateboarding’s short history. He has a child older than team-mates Brown and Lola Tambling.

Macdonald, a veteran of eight X Games gold medals in the late 90s and early 2000s, announced in 2022 that he would switch from representing the US to GB in a bid to reach Paris. His park event’s prelims are at 11:30 and the final is at 16:30.

World watch

Thailand have never won an Olympic medal in a sport other than boxing, taekwondo or weightlifting. Atthaya Thitikul has a chance to change that and has been installed among the bookies’ favourites for gold in Paris women’s golf. Nelly Korda, the defending champion, won six of her first eight tournaments this season but has since missed a series of cuts. The first round starts at 08:00 with GB’s Georgia Hall and Charley Hull in action alongside Ireland’s Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow.

At the athletics track, the first round of the women’s 100m hurdles (09:15) includes Nigerian world record-holder Tobi Amusan, cleared to compete by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in late June after a row over alleged missed doping tests. Commonwealth bronze medallist Cindy Sember runs for GB.

Australia’s Nina Kennedy and America’s Katie Moon shared the women’s pole vault world title last year and still appear almost inseparable heading into the Games. The final starts at 17:15.

Artistic swimming’s team event concludes from 18:30. The absence of Russia blows this contest wide open, since the Russians have won every Olympic team title in this sport from 2000 onwards. China and the US might step in.

Hockey’s women’s semi-finals are at 13:00 and 18:00.

The first weightlifting medals are awarded. In the men’s 61kg, Indonesia’s Eko Yuli Irawan could become the first weightlifter to earn an Olympic medal in five consecutive Games, although he has never won gold.

Expert knowledge

The Olympic 50km race walk, a feat of extraordinary endurance for athlete and spectator alike, is a thing of the past. It was the only men’s athletics event on the 2020 programme that did not have a women’s equivalent, while the four hours or so needed to televise it often did not electrify broadcasters.

Its replacement? The race walk mixed relay. Each team sends one male and one female athlete, who each do two alternating stages of around 10km.

The course is inspired by the Women’s March on Versailles of 1789, a key event in the French Revolution. Expect to see the Grand Palais, Louvre, Palace of Versailles and Eiffel Tower.