With a day to go until Rio lifts the curtain on its opening ceremony, women’s football makes a record-breaking start and the race is on to fill empty seats

Welcome to the first of our daily Olympics briefings, as Rio 2016 doesn’t actually get underway, but comes closer to getting under way. Friday is the day to crack out the caxirolas – or, if you’re in the UK, to have your scathing “well, it’s not exactly the Queen jumping out of a helicopter, is it?” lines ready – as the opening ceremony toots in the official start of the Games.



100 Olympians to watch at Rio 2016 Read more

Every day we’ll bring you a catch-up of all the previous day’s highlights, the coming day’s must-sees and anything else that catches our eye. I’d say it was an A-Z of the world’s greatest sporting event, but until Zorbing is accepted as an Olympic sport, it’s just the A(rchery) to W(restling, Greco-Roman).

The big picture

In the unofficial start to the Games, there’s already been some football, although not many spectators seem to have realised. We have our first record of the Games, though, with the fastest goal in Olympic women’s football history scored by Canada’s Janine Beckie in the first minute against Australia’s Matildas.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest No 16 Janine Beckie scores Canada’s first goal at Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo. Photograph: Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images

Canada won the match 2-0, as did the USA in their game against New Zealand, during which what the crowd lacked in size it made up for in sarcasm, hollering “Zika” at US goalkeeper Hope Solo after her mosquito-repelling tweets ahead of her sojourn in Brazil.

Rounding off the first batch of women’s football matches, Brazil beat China 3-0, Sweden beat South Africa 1-0, Germany squished Zimbabwe 6-1, and France topped Colombia 4-0.

With around 80% of the 7.5m tickets sold – and with “deathly-quiet venue” not being the opening match review organisers were dreaming of – more than 200,000 tickets will now be given away to schoolchildren, who, even if they can’t be guaranteed to stay in their seats, can definitely be relied upon to make a cheering ruckus.

Away from the actual sporting – and isn’t it always the way when you have guests coming over – organisers are dealing with those last-minute tweaks and cushion-plumping: fixing the shower curtains, fishing gloop out of the water, building the venues. In another deadline-testing move, 65,000 tickets were sold on Wednesday, to people who’d apparently just noticed there was some sport happening.

You should also know:

Picture of the day

The Olympic torch has arrived in the host city – but not without incident. Police officers used stun grenades and tear gas to clear the route of protesters as the relay passed through Duque de Caixas, on Rio’s north side.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brazilians wait for the Olympic torch to arrive in the host city of Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Diary

All times are local: add four hours for UK, add 13 hours for eastern Australia; subtract one hour for east-coast US and four for west coast. This is almost an Olympic sport in itself.

Today it’s all about the men’s football. In fact, it’s only the men’s football.

1pm Iraq v Denmark

3pm Honduras v Algeria

4pm Brazil v South Africa

5pm Mexico v Germany

6pm Portugal v Argentina

7pm Sweden v Colombia

8pm Fiji v South Korea

10pm Nigeria v Japan

Team GB roundup

A planner for those watching from the UK should help you plot your waking and sleeping hours for the next couple of weeks. In any case, prepare for a late night on Friday to see Andy Murray take a twirl round the Maracanã Stadium as Team GB’s official flag-bearer. (Prepare also to stay away from anyone on the verge of making a “what, not a saltire, I suppose he’s British again now he’s won Wimbledon twice, ho ho” quip.)

Many of the British team won’t be behind Murray as they’re competing on day one, while some remain at the ominously-named holding camp in Belo Horizonte. Around 55 of the 366 athletes should make the opening bash, while the others stay back to make their mental preparations and unblock the toilets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andy Murray will carry this very big flag for Team GB. He might even give it a wave. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

Meanwhile, in a very last-minute switch, Jack Beaumont will replace Graeme Thomas in the Team GB rowing squad. Crushing news for Thomas, who fell ill with flu after arriving in Brazil, but also for Maidenhead rowing club, whose regatta this weekend is now a man down.

Team USA roundup

As current World Cup champions and four-time Olympic winners, the US women’s football team’s easy victory on day minus two isn’t a surprise. More of a jolt – at least to US site FiveThirtyEight – has been the lack of interest in the women’s game in Brazil itself. Its reporter couldn’t even find a bar in Rio showing the game against New Zealand. (Have a look at this list of the top 20 greatest female players if you’re thinking the Brazilian bar TV-controllers have a point.)

In further not-hugely-surprising news, the Team USA flag-bearer will be the nation’s most successful Olympian, in (probably) his final Olympic outing: Michael Phelps.

Australia team roundup

Busy at 23:22 next Wednesday? You will be, because that’s when the rowing: men’s quad sculls final A is on. Sort out your next fortnight of late nights and early morning sports on our planner here.

Cyclist Anna Meares will be the flag-bearer to watch for green-and-gold fans watching the opening ceremony on Saturday morning. Like Murray and Phelps, she’s been practising flag-holding: it’s not as easy as it looks, you know.

Jess Fox (@JessFoxxx) Amazing words by our @AUSOlympicTeam captain @AnnaMeares !Thanks for getting us pumped, inspired &ready for #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/HtzqYaiqSi

Glossing over the Matildas’ frustrating start to the Games, news that surfing will make the 2020 Olympics cut has cheered up Mick Fanning, the three-time world champion who now fancies his chances of coaching an Australian national team to Tokyo success. Fanning, who famously punched a shark who veered too close to him in a competition last year, will likely face no arguments on this one.

Underdog of the day

The 10-strong refugee team were welcomed in a special ceremony at the athletes’ village on Wednesday. The delegation, which includes five South Sudanese runners, two Syrian swimmers, two judokas from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and an Ethiopian marathon runner, will make Games history, competing under the Olympic flag in their own delegation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Swimmer Rami Anis, a Syrian refugee, dances during a welcome ceremony at the Olympic athletes’ village. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP

Read these

For those UK readers already nostalgic for 2012, Oliver Wainwright examines the real legacy of the London Games:

Four years on, [Sebastian Coe’s] nebulous L word has become a tangible thing, a concept that rambles across 560 acres of east London’s Lower Lea Valley, in the form of housing, shopping malls and some rather large sheds. You can now live, work and play in the Olympic legacy, and shop and eat there too, while marvelling at the cranes busy summoning further chunks of legacy from the ground. That London has a lasting physical inheritance from its two-week £12bn jamboree is indisputable, but what kind of place is the promised Legacy-land turning out to be? So far, it’s an odd one. It is somewhere that feels more like an accidental suburban campus than a real piece of London – a place where the different functions that make up a city have been separated out, each built without much thought given to how they relate.



In the New York Times, John Branch talks to the lifeguards who keep a watchful eye on the Olympic pools:

During a training this week, [Michael] Phelps cruised past, stroke after stroke, lap after lap, training for the competition that begins on Saturday. The arena was mostly empty, with just a smattering of coaches, volunteers and security guards. But watching most intensely from opposite sides of the pool deck were two men in red trunks, with whistles around their necks and flotation devices tucked beneath their arms.

They never used their whistles. They never once yelled at the Olympians to stop running on the pool deck. They never flinched toward action, or even felt their hearts skip a beat faster at the sudden and momentary possibility – is she still underwater? – that someone might need saving. ‘I don’t think they’ll need us, but we’ll be on the lookout just in case.’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An unneeded lifeguard watches US water polo team members Courtney Mathewson (L) and Maddie Musselman (R) after their practice at the aquatics stadium. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images

And Susan Rinkunas in New York magazine assesses the risks of Zika in Rio:

Overall, should Zika be spectators’ biggest worry? Dr [Martin] Cetron [director of global migration and quarantine for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention] says the risk of contracting the flu, a gastrointestinal illness, or even measles or hepatitis if you’re not up to date on vaccines is higher than the risk of getting Zika ‘by a long shot’. The CDC warns Rio-bound travelers of all of these health risks on the same page as Zika. But headlines about traveller’s diarrhoea aren’t as compelling as ones about a scary-sounding new virus, are they?

Tweet of the day

Former England women’s captain Casey Stoney is less than thrilled by the decision not to enter Team GB in the Olympic football competitions:

Casey Stoney MBE (@CaseyStoney) Sat at home watching Germany v Zimbabwe #Rio2016 but can't help feeling like we should be there 😔#TeamGB pic.twitter.com/2NqxDRcNWE

If today were a song



It would be Ready or Not, by the Fugees. Let’s be positive and go with “ready”.

And another thing

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