Austria’s Sepp Straka leads the men’s golf. He’s three under after six holes. Sami Välimäki of Finland and Joachim Hansen of Denmark are one shot back on two under. Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas of the US and Paul Casey of GB are on par and Australia’s Marc Leishman is one over but all four of those players are in the very early stages of their rounds. Some rowing finals are coming up in the next 40 minutes. The men’s pairs final features duos from Canada, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Denmark and Spain. Team GB’s Helen Glover and Polly Swann go in the women’s pairs final – they’re up against Canada, Greece, NZ, ROC and Spain. There are also medals up for grabs in the lightweight double sculls. The women’s final pits the USA and Team GB against France, Italy, the Netherlands and Romania. The men’s final features Ireland, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Uruguay and Belgium. Meanwhile, we have some B finals. Australia won the women’s pairs ahead of Denmark and Romania. As well as being an incredibly difficult sport, gymnastics is also dangerous - you don’t want to land on your neck after flying off a vault or somersaulting off a beam. And that’s another reason Simone Biles knew this week was not the time to compete. Our gymnastics correspondent Tumaini Carayol has more: During her late-night press conference on Tuesday, Biles explained that she also had “twisties”, a word for a mental block in which gymnasts lose their spatial awareness in the middle of complex skills. It is a well-known, terrifying and dangerous sensation for gymnasts. Among many others, Aleah Finnegan, a gymnast on the USA national team, was prompted to speak about the subject on Twitter. “I’ve had the twisties since I was 11,” she wrote. “I cannot imagine the fear of having it happen to you during competition. They have very limited equipment and mats in Tokyo to help something like this get fixed let alone within a day. You have absolutely no control over your body and what it does.” So much of gymnastics is mental and where the sport differs from many others is that if gymnasts are not in the right frame of mind to execute their dangerous skills, they will not simply run slower or strike a ball into a fence. Each complex skill comes with the risk of serious injury, and it is something they are keenly aware of each day. By preserving her mental health, Biles is also protecting herself physically. You can read the full article below, it’s an interesting read: Some golf questions from reader Richard Hirst. “How come the US have four players competing and GB, for example, have two? And how come Rory McIlroy is shown as competing for Ireland when he is from Northern Ireland?” Well, the qualification is based on the world rankings. The top 15 in the men’s and women’s world rankings qualified automatically, up to a limit of four players per country. And seeing as the US is so strong in golf that means four players for the American team. As for Rory, players born in Northern Ireland can compete for either Ireland or Team GB (technically Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Rory chose Ireland. Here’s what he said in 2019: “As a young boy it was always my dream to play for Ireland,” McIlroy explained. “I was very proud to put on that shirt or that blazer. “It’s the same as like the rugby players, right? There’s players that play for Ulster but they want to play for Ireland. It’s seen as a whole island sport, just like hockey is, just like most of the sports are. “So then obviously when you put the Olympics into the equation and there’s a choice to be made, you really have to start thinking, what are your beliefs and your values. “I had an unbelievable amateur career – and I don’t mean that in terms of results – but I mean that in the experiences I had, the trips that I had, the friendships that I made and the friendships that I still have to this day. That was all because of playing for Ireland and getting close to some of those guys. I’m excited to be going to the Olympics. I’m excited to play for Ireland.” It’s morning in Japan and morning in Australia too. Which means our Aussie readers have a full day of action ahead of them. And given the success of Australia so far it may end up being another day awash with precious metals (and bronze, not sure if bronze is more on the semi-precious end). Anyway, here’s what Aussies have to look out for. All times are AEST: Golf 8:30am – men’s individual (Marc Leishman, Cameron Smith) Swimming 11:30am – men’s 800m freestyle final (Jack McLoughlin); 11:44am – men’s 200m breaststroke final (Zac Stubblety-Cook); 11:53am – women’s 100m freestyle semi-finals (Emma McKeon, Cate Campbell); 12:04pm – men’s 200m backstroke semi-finals (Tristan Hollard); 12:28pm – women’s 200m butterfly final (Brianna Throssell); 12:37pm – men’s 100m freestyle final (Kyle Chalmers); 12:54pm – women’s 200m breaststroke semi-finals (Jenna Strauch); 1:08pm – men’s 200m individual medley semi-finals (Mitch Larkin); 1:31pm – women’s 4x200m freestyle relay final (Australia) Rugby sevens 11:30am – women’s Pool C (Australia v Japan); 6:3opm – women’s Pool C (Australia v China) Cycling BMX racing 11am – men’s quarter-finals (Anthony Dean); women’s quarter-finals (Lauren Reynolds, Saya Sakakibara) Shooting 10:50am – men’s trap qualification and finals (Thomas Grice, James Willett); women’s trap qualification and finals (Laetisha Scanlan, Penny Smith); 10am – women’s 25m pistol precision stage (Dina Aspandiyarova, Elena Galiabovitch) Sailing From 1:05pm – Finn men race 5-6 (Jake Lilley); 470 men race 3-4 (Matthew Belcher, Will Ryan); 470 women race 3-4 (Monique de Vries, Nia Jerwood); Laser men race 7-8 (Matt Wearn); Laser radial women race 7-8 (Mara Stransky); 49er men race 5-6 (Will Phillips, Sam Phillips); foiling nacra 17 mixed race 4-6 (Jason Waterhouse, Lisa Darmanin) Canoe Slalom Advertisement 3pm – canoe C1 women’s semi-final (Jess Fox); 4:55pm canoe C1 women’s final Archery 10:34am – men’s individual eliminations (Taylor Worth v Alviyanto Prastyadi); 1:06pm (Ryan Tyack v Nicholas D’Amour); 3pm – David Barnes v Riau Ega Salsabilla); 11:09 am – women’s eliminations (Alice Ingley v Ksnenia Perova) Tennis From 4pm (third match on Court 2) – mixed doubles quarter-finals (Ash Barty and John Peers v Maria Sakkari and Stefanos Tsitsipas) Water polo 7:20pm – men’s preliminaries Group B (Serbia v Australia) Hockey 8pm – women’s Pool B (New Zealand v Australia) The men’s golfers are out doing their golf at the moment. It’s very early days but Finland’s Sami Välimäki is leading at two under with Hoshino Rikuya (Japan), Sepp Straka (Austria) and Joachim Hansen (Denmark) on one under. But plenty of the big guns don’t tee off for a while. Preamble Hello! Another day, another opportunity to watch people doing sport good. Here’s my colleague Martin Belam with what’s in store today: The BMX racing cycling gets under way Thursday, as does the golf. It feels like a slightly quieter programme before the athletics starts on Friday. There are medals available in the canoe slalom, fencing, judo, rowing, shooting, swimming, and table tennis. All events are listed here in local Tokyo time. Add an hour for Sydney, subtract eight hours for Leeds, 13 hours for New York and 16 hours for San Francisco. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve found it easier now to just have a clock set to Tokyo time on my desk at home. 🌟If you only watch one thing: 10.30am-1.20pm Swimming – It has been days now, but I still can’t quite get my head round the swimming having finals in the morning and heats in the evening. It was this way round in Beijing too, designed to suit TV times in the US. Which means the very first race on Thursday is the men’s 800m freestyle final. There are also medals to be had in the men’s 200m breaststroke (10.44am) and the men’s 100m freestyle (11.37am). Caeleb Dressel would have been many people’s favourite for this, but Not Russia’s Kliment Kolesnikov posted a faster qualifying time and Australia’s Kyle Chalmers is in with a shout of gold too. For women, it’s the 200m butterfly (11.28am) and 4x200m freestyle relay final (12.31pm) 🥇 7.30am Golf – day one of the men’s individual stroke play at Kasumigaseki Country Club. If you are in the UK, that starts at 11.30pm tonight, and like the triathlon the other day, could act as a siren call to have you staying up all night if you aren’t careful. 9.00am-7.30pm Rugby sevens – the women’s competition starts on Thursday. The same format as the men, the 12 teams are in three pools of four, the top two in each pool qualify plus the two best third-placed teams. Defending champions Australia face Japan and China on day one. Team GB open against Not Russia and then face New Zealand at 6.30pm. 9.18am-10.10am Rowing – I’ve been loathe to list rowing times, as they’ve been constantly rescheduled during the Games due to weather conditions, but at the time of writing, we are expecting to see the medal races in the men’s and women’s pairs and the men’s and women’s lightweight double sculls in the space of an hour. The water may have other ideas 🥇 10am-11.45am Cycling BMX racing – the men and the women do three runs in the quarter-finals 10.50am-7.55pm Fencing – it’s the women’s foil team contest on Thursday 🥇 2.30pm-3.30pm Shooting – the trap competition reaches day two, with qualification rounds at 9am, and then the women’s final at 2.30pm and the men at 3.30pm 🥇 3pm Tennis – finally, a few days in, organisers have listened to the pleas of the players, and the sessions are being pushed into the afternoon and evening to avoid the worst of Tokyo’s heat. Not before, however, Spain’s Paula Badosa left the court in a wheelchair today because of its effects. The women’s singles reaches the semi-final stage on Thursday. 5pm-7.50pm Judo – there’s judo all day from 11am, but by the close of play we’ll have reached the business end of the women’s -78kg and the men’s -100kg 🥇 7.50pm Artistic gymnastics – with all the headlines around it, you’ve probably already clocked that it’s going to be the women’s all-around final 🥇 You can find our full interactive events schedule here, which during the day has live scores and results feeding into it as they happen. I had it open this morning trying to make sense of the men’s cycling time trial. The wind is picking up at the Sea Forest Waterway for the rowing as we prepare for the medal races but no sign of any delays. Yet. The women’s rugby sevens has started and the opening match features Fiji and France. The Fiji men’s team won the gold yesterday, let’s see if the women can get off to a winning start - it’s 7-5 to the French at the moment.