Le Journal is your morning Olympics catch-up on the action you might've missed from overnight, and a look behind the scenes at what’s going on in Paris.
Flying Fairweather into final
Erika Fairweather has stormed into the women’s 400m freestyle final with the third fastest time of 4:02:55.
The final, at 6:52am NZT, will feature heavyweights Ariarne Titmus and Katie Ledecky. She told media she's "all for shaking things up," as she prepares to do battle in what's being described as the "race of the century."
Tennis star's lucky break
New Zealand's latest tennis sensation Lulu Sun's year keeps getting better. Overnight she earned a surprise call up to the Olympic singles draw, after Kazakhstan's Yulia Putintseva pulled out.
The Kiwi, who'll also play with Erin Routliffe in the doubles, will face Ukranian Marta Kostyuk.
Rain has put today's play for the New Zealanders on hold until tomorrow.
Twigg moves forward, Cadzow avoids brutal crashes
Tokyo Gold medallist Emma Twigg is up and running in her Gold medal defence, after a convincing heat win. While Kim Cadzow avoided the fate of a number of time trial cyclists to impress on her Olympics debut.
She handled the wet, slippery conditions like a pro - while many of her fiercest rivals came off their bikes.
A clean run keeping the 22-year-old in top spot right up until the final wave of riders came through - eventually finishing 7th out of 35 riders with a time of 41:46:02.
Black Sticks heartbreak, sevens get fifth
The men's Black Sticks narrowly went down to hockey heavyweights India 3-2 in a brave showing.
The team can take heart from their first pool match despite the result with India waiting until the end of the fourth quarter to snatch the victory.
The All Blacks Sevens won two matches against Argentina and Ireland overnight to secure fifth place.
Not the result they wanted, but the team showed heart to finish strong.
Not quite ‘as Seine on TV’
The opening ceremony may have been a visual extravaganza of the weird and the wonderful, but make no mistake: this is an event for television audiences.
The French authorities sold it as an opening ceremony for the people.
But the poor residents and tourists were well and truly washed out. Many climbed up on wheelie bins, or into trees, to catch a minor glimpse of the procession.
This reporter had a fairly typical view of proceedings.
Not that people were too disheartened. There was a party atmosphere, some getting more carried away than others.
1News spotted a rather inebriated man wearing a Canadian t-shirt getting booted from the heavily-policed crowd.
Although he’s not the first person wearing Canada colours to get kicked out of an Olympics event this week.
Sold up the river
Michelle Prendiville and Jordan Oppert saw one couple left fuming after shelling out for ‘prime’ seats.
“They paid 2500 Euros each to have a seat at the opening ceremony, but they couldn’t see anything so they had to come and stand down with the media,” Michelle explained.
“The lovely lady said ‘we haven’t paid 2500 Euros to stand behind a screen,’” Jordan added.
“The problem was because it was wet, no-one paid any attention to their seat numbers. So thousands of people just flocked into the hospitality spot where we were and took a seat.”
High jumper's sinking feeling
Italy's flag bearer is in the dog box after losing his wedding ring in the Seine during the ceremony.
Gianmarco Tamberi posted on Instagram: "I'm sorry my love, I'm really, really sorry."
"Too much water, too many kilograms lost over the last few months and maybe the uncontrollable enthusiasm of what we were doing."
He's invited his wife to throw hers into the river too so they can "be together forever."
SHARE ME