Tokyo Olympics LIVE: Latest news as Novak Djokovic loses semi-final and Team GB claim more…

In a series of Instagram stories that have since been deleted, Michael Che (left) posted jokes he received about Simone Biles (pictured bottom-left inset) – who withdrew from two events at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this week. Che wrote about wanting to make jokes about the athlete, and then asked for his followers to share their own jokes about her (in a message pictured right). The comedian then shared some of the responses he received about Biles, along with ratings out of ten based on how good he thought the so-called joke was. One of the ‘jokes’, which Che rated 9/10, was about Larry Nassar (bottom-middle inset), the former USA Gymnastics doctor was was convicted of abusing hundreds of women and girls in his care and sentenced to 40 – 175 years in prison in 2018. People reacted furiously to Che’s posts, which he later deleted and claimed he had been hacked.

USA have progressed through to the semi-final of the the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games after beating Holland 4-2 on penalties. The two finalists from the 2019 Women’s World Cup final met in the quarterfinals of this summer’s Olympic Games in Yokohama on Friday. However, it was Vlatko Andonovski’s side who held their bottle and emerged victorious thanks to goals from Rose Lavelle, Alex Morgan, Christen Press and Megan Rapinoe.

The BBC has admitted it did have the full TV broadcasting rights to the Tokyo Olympics but traded them to ensure it could screen future Games. The terrestrial broadcaster has been heavily criticised for being able to screen just two events at one time during the ongoing Games across its television channels, iPlayer service and website. This is in stark contrast to the 2012 London and the 2016 Rio Olympics, when the BBC was able to offer streams of over 20 sports at the same time.

The 100M world record holder, Usain Bolt, ate an estimated 1,000 McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets during the Bejing Olympics in 2008 – munching on 100 across breakfast, lunch and dinner over 10 days in the Olympic Village. To celebrate, on Sunday 1st August, My McDonald’s App users across the UK can get 6 x Chicken McNuggets for just 99p – an offer worth sprinting to take advantage of. The 2.70 saving is available exclusively on the My McDonald’s App,  so customer ordering in store, or via Deliveroo, JustEat and UberEats won’t be able to take advantage of the offer.

Tahani al-Qahtani stepped on to the mat against Raz Hershko in Tokyo on Friday, defying pressure to boycott after two Muslim athletes quit the men’s competition rather than face Israeli opposition. Al-Qahtani ultimately lost the bout, but in a touching show of solidarity clasped her opponent’s hand afterwards, before Hershko raised their fists into the air. It is a far cry from Algerian Fethi Nourine and Sudanese Mohamed Abdalrasool who refused to show up for their bouts in the men’s 73kg competition earlier this week when they found out they would be facing Tohar Butbul, an Israeli. Nourine said he was refusing to face Butbul as a show of solidarity with Palestinians, and while Abdalrasool never explicitly stated his reason for quitting, it was understood to be on similar grounds.

Selemon Barega has been crowned as the new 10,000m champion after London 2012 and Rio 2016 gold medal winner Mo Farah failed to qualify for this summers Games. World record holder Joshua Cheptegei (26:11.00) was among the favourites to win the race, while Jacob Kiplimo fancied his chances after registering the fastest time in the world this year at 26.33.93. However, Barega asserted his dominance on the final lap to take the lead and bring home the gold for Ethiopia.

Sophie McKinna has revealed she was one of the six British athletes forced into Covid isolation after crashing out of shot put qualifying. The 26-year-old could only manage 17.81m – 80cm down on her best – and then disclosed her preparations had been shredded when she was found to have been a close contact of an infected passenger on her flight to Japan. She has since returned 28 negative tests but has been training under stringent restrictions ahead of the biggest competition of her career.

World number one Oliver Townend gave Great Britain’s eventing team a flying start to their medal quest at Tokyo Equestrian Park. Townend, competing at his first Olympics, was second to go in the opening phase of dressage aboard his 2017 Burghley champion Ballaghmor Class. And the 38-year-old Yorkshireman did not disappoint, posting a score of 23.60 to lead after the first group of 21 riders.

In the 1908 Olympic Games, home-grown competitors romped home with a stunning haul of 146 medals – more than three times the number of the second-placed US. Our swimmers (gold medal winner Henry Taylor pictured left) were particularly successful, with athletes in the pool bringing home four gold medals. The feats of Henry Taylor, Frederick Holman and the members of the freestyle relay team only came close to being matched this week at the Tokyo Games, where Britain’s swimmers (inset top) have won three golds so far. But the 1908 Olympic Games were supposed to be held in Rome – until a dramatic eruption (inset bottom) of the infamous Mount Vesuvius two years earlier saw Britain step in as host. Yet despite the short notice, the London Games were very well organised, thanks in part to the British Olympic Association’s aristocrat chief Lord Desborough. Within just 12 months, the world’s first purpose-built Olympic stadium (top right) was built in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, with Desborough persuading the organisers of the neighbouring Franco-British exhibition to foot the £60,000 bill. Pictured right: Female archers participating at the 1908 London Olympics. The discipline was won by Great Britain’s Sybil ‘Queenie’ Newall.

RIATH AL-SAMARRAI IN TOKYO: Dina Asher-Smith is up and running. The concern ahead of her summit assault this weekend is the multitude of women who are up and running considerably faster. We have only seen the heats, of course. And it’s true the sole imperative of the first round is progress, which she attained on Friday with an 11.07sec run to reach the 100m semi-finals on Saturday evening.

IAN HERBERT AT THE ARIAKE TENNIS PARK: Novak Djokovic declared he felt ‘terrible’ after his search for an historic ‘Golden Slam’ ended in an extraordinary slump at the hands of Alexander Zverev. The world No 1 was cruising towards the Olympic men’s singles final, a set and a break up, and his opponent had just smashed a ball over the roof of the court in frustration. Then Djokovic’s game fell apart. He proceeded to lose 10 games out of 11, including four service games in which he won a total of just five points. ‘You’ve got to give [Zverev] credit for turning the match around,’ said Djokovic, who immediately lost a mixed doubles semi-final, too, ‘He served extremely well. My serve just drastically dropped. My game fell apart.’

The east Londoner, 22, started the sport on a second hand bike with borrowed kit after her school (inset with her brother) urged her to ‘give it a go’ and this morning she became a household name in Britain after grabbing gold (left and inset). The victory caps a rollercoaster journey for Shriever, who left the GB setup to go solo in 2019 and aimed to raise £50,000 via crowdfunding to enable her to even compete after Team GB decided only to fund male riders. And as well as the financial hurdles to overcome, Shriever’s path to becoming an Olympian was hampered by eye-watering injuries, breaking the same wrist three times and suffered a tibia and fibula fracture, which required metal plates to be inserted into her leg – only for the procedure to have to be repeated some 18 months later after another crash. Due to Covid-19 Miss Shriever’s ‘tight family’ group of her parents and boyfriend Brynley (together right) who were watching live on Friday morning from their home near Chelmsford in Essex. And she was cheered on by her training partner Kye Whyte, who grabbed silver in the race before, leaving her crying tears of joy for her friend as she stood on the start line of the biggest race of her life.

Team GB’s Luke Greenbank questioned whether he was racing against ‘clean’ swimmers in the 200m backstroke after taking the bronze medal behind Ryan Murphy and the winner, Evgeny Rylov of Russia. It was silver medallist Murphy who first raised concerns over the event, and Greenbank added to this by admitting it was ‘frustrating’ at the ROC were competing despite the country being banned. Russia were prevented from taking part after a state-sponsored doping programme was uncovered, and they were also found guilty by the Court of Arbitration for Sport after failing to comply with a World Anti-Doping Agency probe. Rylov, who completed a 100m and 200m backstroke double with an Olympic record, is allowed to represent Russia’s Olympic Committee rather than the flag along with hundreds of others, a decision that has been widely criticised.

The two riders cut emotional figures, both having clinched a medal of their own after Whyte took silver, and displayed touching support for each other during their races. Footage taken from the Ariake Urban Sports Park shows Shriever making her way around the course, narrowly in the lead, while Whyte roars her on from a distance. Whyte, 20, became more animated as Shriever closed in on history – Great Britain’s first gold medal in the discipline – but then nervously watched her reach the line. A clearly exhausted Shriever was hoisted into the air, after the silver medallist had thrown his bottle to the floor in jubilation and dashed down the course to her.

The Scot was the sixth competitor to take to the water, with Germany’s Hannes Aigner leading with a time of 97.11 seconds. However, Forbes-Cryans made a costly error on the fifth gate, being taken off course by the strong current as the 26-year-old desperately tried to get his charge back on track. He crossed the line with a time of 100.58secs, well off the pace to challenge for a medal.

DAVID COVERDALE IN TOKYO: After nervously waiting 90 seconds for her score to flash up on the screen, brilliant Bryony Page then bounced as high as she had on the trampoline. The 30-year-old’s twists and tumbles had received 55.735 points and, with just two gymnasts left to perform, she knew that had secured her a second successive Olympic medal. The bronze was not all she had won. When she was starting out in the sport aged 12, Page’s dad Steve promised to buy his daughter a new leotard every time she upgraded the difficulty of her routine.

Jacquie Hughes (right with Tom), a former BBC boss now working for broadcasting complaints watchdog Ofcom, has spoken out as she experienced the pure joy of seeing her son become the first British male swimmer to win more than one gold at a single Olympics in 113 years (left). In London 2012 and Rio 2016, the corporation aired 2,500 hours on countless live streams on its red button. But this time US broadcaster Discovery paid £920million to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to control European coverage and will now only allow the BBC to show two live events at any one time. The corporation has also been blasted by angry viewers for tweeting spoilers of British Olympians winning their first medals after not showing their events live. Ms Hughes said: ‘The number of people that have raised this with me and said, “I can’t believe I can’t get all the games on the BBC…I’ve watched the Olympics my whole life”. It’s sad from a viewers point of view, but it’s funny for me having been party to those conversations and those debates my whole life – to be suddenly on the receiving end of it.’