Wales at the Olympics - day one round-up
Tarling misses out on medal by two seconds after puncture
- Published
Josh Tarling missed out on a medal in the men’s time trial after sustaining an early puncture.
The 20-year-old from Aberaeron was forced to change bikes and lost around 15 seconds.
He did his best to claw himself back into medal contention but ended up missing out on the podium by just 2.16 seconds.
“Bad luck, I guess,” he said afterwards. “It happens.
“I tried [to make up the time]. I did a good ride. It’s all I could do. I’m happy with it. It is what it is.
“Right now it hurts. But we can move onto the road race.
Tarling reflects on ‘bad luck’ in time trial
“A puncture and the corners were quite slippy. I couldn’t see a lot with the visor so had to get rid of that. A bad day.
“I’m going to try to forget about this and move on.”
Matt Richards’ first appearance of the Paris Olympics ended in disappointment as Great Britain finished fifth in the men’s 4x100m relay final.
Richards came in for the final and swam the first leg in 47.83. Jacob Whittle, Tom Dean and Duncan Scott followed but GB finished just under a second off the podium.
The race was won by USA, with Australia and Italy completing the podium.
“Obviously it’s frustrating," Richards told BBC Sport.
"We really wanted to try to get in there and get after the medals tonight. So it’s tough to be on the wrong side of it.
"But I think we all put in a great effort. We’ll move on and see what we do the rest of the week.
“[The men’s 4x200m freestyle relay] is a huge opportunity for us. So we want to get after it, see what we can do, put ourselves up against the best and give it our all.”
Between Sydney 2000 and the last Olympics in Tokyo, no Welsh male hockey players were picked for an Olympics. Now there are three in the team - Gareth Furlong, Rupert Shipperley and Jacob Draper.
They all played a starring role in Great Britain’s impressive 4-0 win over Spain. There were two goals for Olympic debutant Furlong and one for Rupert Shipperley.
“I don’t feel too much pressure,” said drag flick specialist Furlong. “We do our prep, we do our practice. When you come out on the pitch you can execute that.
“The biggest positive is to come away with all three points. It is the ideal start, so yeah, really happy.”
Becky Wilde used to dream of going to the Olympics as a swimmer. She represented Wales for years but after narrowly missing out on the 2018 Commonwealths, she switched to rowing.
On Saturday, alongside Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne in the women’s double sculls, Wilde achieved her Olympic dream. The pair finished second in their heat in 6:52.31 to qualify for Tuesday’s semi-finals.
Great Britain v Spain Hockey highlights
“It felt like we could’ve gone up another gear at the end,” said Wilde.
“We’ll go back to our coach and evaluate. We maybe shouldn’t have let NZ come through but that was our race.
“We knew our job was other get top three and we did that so we’re happy.”
Also in the rowing, the men’s quadruple sculls - featuring Welsh rowers Tom Barras and Graeme Thomas - finished second in their heat to move straight into Wednesday’s final.
Kieran Bird swam in the men’s 400m freestyle heats. He finished 5th in 3:47.54 - not enough to make the final - but he could feature in relays later in the programme.