Rio 2016 Olympics: Liam Heath wins kayak sprint for GB’s 25th gold – live! – The Guardian

Day 15, another Saturday – Super Saturday? Satiating Saturday? – and the biggest gold rush of the Games so far, with a full 30 on offer today. Follow them all here, if only to test the live blog team as we try not to miss any.

Here’s our recap of day 14, when half of Britain remembered how exciting hockey can be (the other half knew already) and the greatest athlete continued to be the greatest athlete.

The big picture

It’s nine golds for Usain Bolt as he motored Jamaica home in the men’s 4x100m in laughably brilliant style. That’s the triple treble – 100m, 200m and 4x100m in three successive Games – and, he says, the end of his Olympic career.

A special note for pedantic readers (you’re my favourites) – you’ll see a lot of “triple triple”s flying about, but I’m sticking with “triple treble” and the man himself confirms it:

Team GB topped their 4x400m men’s relay heat but won’t be in today’s final after they too exchanged the baton in the wrong place and were disqualified. Trinidad and Tobago’s men managed their own unique double, disqualified from both the 4x100m final and the 4x400m heats.

Disqualification isn’t the end, though (I mean, technically it is, most of the time). The US women’s 4x100m team, out of the final then in again, ended up with the gold medal ahead of Jamaica and Team GB.

You should also know:

• Germany beat Sweden 2-1 to win their first women’s football gold.
• Brazil to play for pride not revenge in men’s football final.
• Rio Paralympics to be downsized amid disappointing ticket sales.
• Gunnar Bentz: Ryan Lochte shouted at guards during gas station incident.

Picture of the day

Team GB roundup

A final, a penalty shoot-out: the omens weren’t good but the result was. Team GB’s women emerged golden and glorious over the Netherlands in the hockey final, winning the shootout 2-0 after the match ended 3-3. Unbeaten in Rio, the team made history in all sorts of ways: the first women’s hockey gold for Britain, and the first same-sex married couple (captain Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh) to win Olympic gold.

History too for Nick Skelton, at 58 the second oldest British gold-winner (but you have to go a long way back – 1908 – for the oldest), as he leapt remarkably to the top of the podium for individual showjumping. In seven Games he’s now collected two golds – and a broken neck and a hip replacement along the way – and he says he’ll keep going as long as his horse, Big Star, keeps jumping.

Ain’t that a kick in the head: Lutalo Muhammad was leading in the men’s -80kg taekwondo until – literally; abandon suspicions of hype – the final second. The foot of Ivory Coast’s Cheick Sallah Cissé made contact with Muhammad’s helmet and that was that: Ivory Coast’s first gold, and silver for Britain. It was one up on Muhammad’s 2012 bronze but he was heartbroken, weeping in his post-bout interview as he apologised (no need!) to spectators who’d stayed up late to watch him.

Insomniacs would also have caught a bronze in the women’s 4x100m: Asha Philip, Desiree Henry, Dina Asher-Smith and Daryl Neita ran it in 41.77s and nabbed Britain’s first women’s sprint relay medal for 36 years. The sleepless will be rewarded tonight as Mo Farah runs in the 5,000m at 1.30am BST, with Team GB’s women (if not the disqualified men) taking up the baton for the 4x400m after that. Those with less stamina can still catch Tom Daley and Nicola Adams earlier in the day (see diary below).

• Team GB to return to victory parades in Manchester and London.
• Joe Joyce reaches super-heavyweight boxing final.
• Hockey: Twitter reacts to ‘one of the best moments of the Games’.

Australia team roundup

Chloe Esposito describes herself as “chronically indecisive so I do modern pentathlon”. Luckily, she does it decisively well. Esposito took gold in the women’s quintet of fencing, swimming, show jumping, pistol shooting and cross-country running – Australia’s first ever Olympic medal in the discipline – recovering from seventh place before the final round to emerge as champion. Her brother Max Esposito will be gunning for a second in the men’s event today, if only because it’s really annoying when your siblings beat you.

Just weeks after he was finally presented with the gold medal he should have worn at London 2012 (the belated disqualification of Russian drug cheat Sergey Kirdyapkin bumping him up from second place), Jared Tallent won a silver in Rio in the 50km walk. He was briskly ahead with five minutes to go but, as Tallent put it, “ just ran out of legs” and lost out to Slovakia’s Matej Toth, who had retained his legs to the last.

One gold, two silvers and a bronze make Tallent Australia’s most decorated Olympic athletics competitor. In the women’s pole vault, Alana Boyd only just – having hit the same heights but with one more miss than third-placed Eliza McCartney of New Zealand – failed to win a medal.

It was boo-hoo time for the Boomers, who crashed out 87-61 in the semi-finals of the men’s basketball. Their vanquishers? Serbia, whose women’s team knocked Australia out at the quarter-final stage. Serbia (men’s) now face the mighty Team USA on the final day of the Games; the Boomers scrabble for bronze against Spain at 11.30am on Rio’s Sunday morning (that’s 12.30am Monday AEST for the really committed).

And no BMX medals will be coming home after high hopes Caroline Buchanan (who crashed out in the women’s semi-final) and Sam Willoughby (sixth in the men’s final) went up and over and out.

• Australian athletes questioned by police in Rio over basketball accreditation.
• Emma McKeon will march in closing ceremony after apology for Rio night out.
• Team Australia day 14 roundup.

Team USA roundup

Three golds counts as a lull when you’re top of the leaderboard, although there was a highlight in the commanding victory for the US women in the 4x100m relay final they nearly didn’t make. An impressive (understatement) team of Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix, English Gardner and Tori Bowie – three of them already with Rio medals stashed in the locker – saw off Jamaica and Britain in 41.01s.

Felix, now the first female track and field athlete to win five gold medals, incredibly gets another go at besting that in the 4x400m finals today. The US women qualified fastest, do I need to add?

It looked as if the women’s gold would be paired with a bronze by the men’s sprint team before they were turfed out of their 4x100m finals for a baton-swap mishap. Bartoletta, Felix, Gardner and Bowie will instead have to compare golds with the women’s water polo team, who fended off Italy 12-5 in their final.

Connor Fields swiped gold on his way to men’s BMX victory, too. Alise Post took silver in the women’s BMX, as did Sandi Morris in the women’s pole vault.

• Men’s basketball semi-final: USA beat Spain 82-76.

Diary

All times below are local to Rio: here’s the full day 15 timetable tweaked for wherever you are. Or add four hours for UK, add 13 hours for eastern Australia; subtract one hour for east-coast US and four for west coast.

• Seven golds to watch for in athletics: the women’s high jump at 8.30pm; men’s javelin at 8.55pm; men’s 1,500m at 9pm; women’s 800m at 9.15pm (is Caster Semenya unbeatable here?); men’s 5,000m at 9.30pm (COME. ON. MO.); the women’s 4x400m relay at 10pm; and the men’s 4x400m relay at 10.35pm.
• Britain’s Nicola Adams will be after the double in her women’s flyweight gold bout against France’s Sarah Ourahmoune at 2pm. Two other boxing finals: the men’s bantamweight at 2.15pm and men’s middleweight at 3pm.

• The men’s 10m platform diving semi-finals jump off at 11am, with the final at 4.30pm. Britain’s Tom Daley qualified first.
• Team USA take on Spain in the women’s basketball final at 3.30pm.
• And it’s the final, too, of the women’s handball: that one, also at 3.30pm, is France v Russia.
• Men’s football sees Brazil v Germany in the final at 5.30pm. Honduras and Nigeria scrap for bronze at 1pm.
• It’s China v Serbia in the women’s volleyball final at 10.15pm. Netherlands and the US play for bronze at 1pm.
• The men’s water polo washes up with a Croatia v Serbia final at 5.50pm.
• The badminton concludes with the men’s singles gold match; China or Malaysia will win that one.
• They’re sprinting through the canoeing finals with four today: the men’s kayak single 200m at 9.07am (featuring GB’s silver medallist Liam Heath); men’s canoe double 1,000m at 9.22am; women’s kayak four 500m at 9.47am; and the men’s kayak four 1,000m at 10.12am.
• The women’s triathlon gets going at 11am.
• It’s the first outing for cycling of the mountain bike variety, with the women’s cross-country at 12.30pm.
• The final round of the women’s golf – shall I? Yes – tees off at 7am. South Korea’s Inbee Park leads NZ’s Lydia Ko in the standings.
• It’s the final of the rhythmic gymnastics individual all-around at precisely 4.59pm.
• Five heats of the men’s modern pentathlon conclude at 6pm. Australia’s Max Esposito is under pressure after his sister Chloe took gold in the women’s.
• Two taekwondo finals: the women’s +67kg at 10pm – Britain’s Bianca Walkden is world champion and would like to be there – and the men’s +80kg at 10.15pm.
• The penultimate day of wrestling closes with two finals in the men’s freestyle 86kg and 125kg.

Sportspersonship of the day

There was drama in the men’s 50km walk as Japanese athlete and third-placed finisher Hirooki Arai was disqualified and then reinstated. Which meant Canada’s Evan Dunfree was – all too briefly – a bronze medal-winner. He explained why he decided not to appeal against the decision:

Even if an appeal to CAS [court of arbitration for sport] were successful I would not have been able to receive that medal with a clear conscience and it isn’t something I would have been proud of.

I will sleep soundly tonight, and for the rest of my life, knowing I made the right decision. I will never allow myself to be defined by the accolades I receive, rather the integrity I carry through life.

Tweet of the day

When Team USA had a second shot at qualifying for the finals of the women’s 4x100m – and blitzed it – it was China that was shunted off the start list. Still, they’re taking news that they were bumped for the eventual winners in good spirit. Ish.

It would have to be Dean Martin’s Ain’t That a Kick in the Head. Sorry, Lutalo.

And another thing

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