The second week of the Paris 2024 Olympics begins on Saturday with a massive 31 gold medals to be won and lost across the venues in the French capital and throughout the country of France on what looks like a truly great day of sport.
Among the highlights on Saturday we will find out who the fastest woman in the world is while we will also determine the best female tennis player of the week as well. There is so much to look forward to on what appears to be a sizzling Saturday.
Gold Medal Events
- Archery
- Artistic Gymnastics
- Athletics
- Badminton
- Equestrian
- Fencing
- Judo
- Road Cycling
- Rowing
- Sailing
- Shooting
- Surfing
- Swimming
- Table Tennis
- Tennis
Other Sports
We will preview the penultimate day of the tennis competition elsewhere on the site but as well as all of the gold medal sports we also have the continuation of the team events such as hockey, handball, basketball, volleyball, water polo and 3×3 basketball. In addition to that we get towards the knockout stages in the beach volleyball competition while singles events such as archery, badminton and table tennis continue alongside the medal events in those sports. Hopefully the sailing regatta will continue if the wind is strong enough.
Cycling
There is so much great spot on over the course of Saturday but the pick of it could come on the Parisian roads where the men’s road race will take place where a Dutchman in Mathieu van der Poel will look to defy the Belgian charge led by the time trial gold medallist Remco Evenepoel, Wout van Aert and Jasper Stuyven with a couple of other one day classic riders tipped to enter the frame too. These national one day events can be very unpredictable and tactics will be interesting here, not least because it is a maximum of four riders per country. You wouldn’t think anyone in the peloton will be riding to bring the Belgians to the front of the race with the talent they have so much like in 2012 when nobody would help Britain bring a breakaway back, there has to be a chance of a break succeeding here, especially with 13 categorised climbs along the route, the last of which is just nine kilometres from the finish.
I’ll go with two riders, one potentially in a breakaway and the other who is smart enough to win if the Belgians do all the work at the front but don’t have much left in the tank. That rider is the Australian rider Michael Matthews. He had a bit of a low-key Tour de France but he was second in the Milan-San Remo race earlier in the year and won a stage of the Giro last year. He also won the bronze medal at the World Championship in 2022 so the Aussie knows how to position himself in these one-day races. With others potentially marked a lot more he might be able to benefit. I refuse to believe that the crowds are going to line these roads without a Frenchman in any breakaway that goes up the road to whip the crowds up. You would imagine Christophe Laporte would be well marked while Julian Alaphilippe hasn’t looked the same for a year or two but is still likely to be marked. That could lead to Kevin Vauquelin to escape the pack and the man who won stage two of the Tour de France this year, on a route not too dissimilar to this, albeit a shorter stage, could be dangerous. He won that race from a breakaway which incidentally Matthews tried to join and I wouldn’t be surprised to see either in contention as the finish line approaches here.
Special Offer
Sign up for a Boylesports account and bet £10 to get up to £20 in free bets! Perfect offer for the Olympics! Click the image below for this great offer! New accounts only. 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Aware.
Rowing
It is the final day of the rowing regatta on Saturday where the single sculls finals and the final of both eights complete the Olympic programme. I’m not really interested in the single sculls finals where there isn’t a huge amount of value with odds on favourites in both events and the same goes for the women’s eight where the odds would suggest the Romania boat only has to stay above water to win that race but the men’s eight is much more different.
We have bookmakers who can’t split Great Britain and USA and some have either favourite and the other as the outsider. If we go by the heats then USA would be warm favourites having recorded a time over seven second faster than Great Britain but USA needed to because they had a dangerous Dutch crew in their heat whereas Britain were in a heat with Australia who only just came through the repechage. There will clearly be more in the tank for Great Britain but USA have had a good hit out. Britain have won the last two world titles in this discipline and having had the easier week I think they will edge this one. New Zealand won this in Tokyo but the British crews were ordinary there. They are going much better now and look likely to land the big one here.
Gymnastics
After a day off the artistic gymnastics for the trampolinists to shine, the attention goes back to the routine gymnastics with three apparatus finals on Saturday. We will see the gold medals handed out in the men’s floor discipline, the women’s vault and the men’s pommel horse with the latter likely to get a lot of TV coverage with Max Whitlock going for an unprecedented fourth gold medal having come out on top in London, Rio and Tokyo.
Whitlock only qualified in third place for this final though with the Irish world champion Rhys McClenaghan one of those who was ahead of him however in the team final Whitlock scored a higher score than anyone did in qualifying so he is in decent shape to retain his gold medal. He performed a routine that had a difficulty of 6.900 in that team final which is higher than anyone attempted in qualifying so he is clearly feeling it at the minute. McClenaghan didn’t compete in the team final so he hasn’t been involved since the beginning of the week while Stephen Nedoroscik was also in the team final but recorded a score much lower than Whitlock. This looks to be between the Brit and the Irish gymnast but the 9/4 on Whitlock is hard to ignore with history on his side.
Swimming
It is the penultimate day of action in the swimming pool on Saturday too and we have four finals to enjoy in the evening. We haven’t had the heats of the Mixed 4x100m Medley Relay and we don’t know if Adam Peaty if fit to compete for Great Britain yet so I’ll leave that one alone while the Women’s 800m Freestyle gold is pretty much already around the neck of Katie Ledecky. I was initially going to be all over Summer Mcintosh in the Women’s 200m Individual Medley but she looked like a tired swimmer in the semi-final and while I would imagine adrenalin will get her through the final I’m just put off enough to get involved.
That leaves the Men’s 100m Butterfly where the home crowds will be hoping that Maxime Grousset can add to the gold medals that France have won in the pool this week but Kristof Milak has been the fastest in the field in the first two rounds and looks like he is going to take a bit of beating having been edged out in the defence of his 200m title earlier in the meeting. Milak has seen one Frenchman beat him this week and he’ll be determined to avoid seeing another take a gold medal from him. The Hungarian took silver in this event in Tokyo and won gold in the 2022 World Championship so he has a decent pedigree. Grousset has been busy swimming Freestyle in the latter part of this week and might be vulnerable to the fresher man. I like the even money on Milak here.
Tips
Back M.Matthews to win Cycling Road Race (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 51.00 with Bet365 (1/4 1-3)
Back K.Vauquelin to win Cycling Road Race (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 201.00 with Boylesports (1/5 1-4)
Back K.Milak to win Men’s 100m Butterfly for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Boylesports
Back them here:
Back Great Britain to win Men’s Eight for a 3/10 stake at 2.25 with Coral
Back M.Whitlock to win Men’s Pommel Horse for a 2/10 stake at 3.25 with Bet365
