Tokyo 2020 Olympics: athletics, cycling, modern pentathlon and more – live!

Hello Olympics fans. And specifically race walking fans, I know it’s a big day for you. In preparation for today’s blog, I walked earlier.* More than once, it was great.

(*Amusing aside courtesy of Will Unwin).

Things are quietening down a little as the Games approach the final stages, but don’t stop reading because that’s how we make our money and I need to buy some new shoes. Plus the Olympics are great! Here’s my colleague Martin Belam with what to expect today.

Key events for Friday 6 August

All events are listed here in local Tokyo time. Add an hour for Sydney, subtract eight hours for Aberdeen, 13 hours for Washington DC and 16 hours for San Francisco.

?If you only watch one thing: 2.30pm-7.30pm Modern pentathlon – you’ll never convince me that the sports making up the modern pentathlon weren’t drawn out of a hat in 1912 when someone asked people to write down things they thought a 13th-century French knight would be able to do, but it is undoubtedly compelling viewing. The women today go swimming from 2.30pm, fencing at 3.45pm, do a bit of showjumping at 5.15pm and then finish it off with a combined cross-country hike and a bit of laser-shooting where you don’t get penalised for misses, but the faster you can hit five targets the faster you can get running again. Unmissable stuff ?

5.30am and 4.30pm Race walk – yes, that’s 5.30am in Sapporo for the men’s 50km race walk. The women race walk 20km in the afternoon. Imagine having to get up for a 5.30am start ?
7.30am Golf – two hours after the men start the 50km race walk, it’s a leisurely 7.30am start for round three of the women’s golf
10.30am and 7pm Hockey – Team GB’s women go for bronze against India in the morning, then Argentina and the Netherlands hockey it out for the gold in the evening ?
1.40pm and 8pm Basketball – women’s semi-finals. The US have an approximately 1,057-year long winning streak and face Serbia in the first match. The hosts play France in the evening.
3.30pm and 7.50pm Water polo – there are some placing matches as well, but the real meat is the men’s semi-finals. Greece v Hungary in the afternoon, and Serbia v Spain in the evening. Expect fireworks.
3.30pm-7.15pm Track cycling – highlights include the women’s madison final at 5.15pm and the men’s sprint finals at 6.35pm ?
5.30pm, 6.30pm and 9.10pm Sport climbing – it’s the climax of the women’s event in three sessions with the medal at the end ?
7.30pm Artistic swimming – it is the team technical routine.
7.30pm Table tennis – there’s a bronze match earlier at 11am, but in the evening it is the men’s team gold medal match. Can Germany stop China making it a fourth straight win since this event was introduced in 2008? Probably not ?
7.50pm-10.55pm Athletics – there is only one session in the stadium and it is mostly finals: the women’s javelin, the men’s 5,000m, the women’s 400m, the women’s 1500m – which will feature Lisa Muir and the Netherlands’ Sifan Hassan – and it then ends with the women’s and men’s 4x100m finals ?
9pm Football – the rescheduled women’s final between Sweden and Canada ?

You can find our full interactive events schedule here, and it acts as a live scoreboard during the day.

As it stands

Here’s how the emoji table stood at 10.15pm Tokyo time:

1 ?? China ? 34 ? 24 ? 16 total: 74
2 ?? USA ? 29 ? 35 ? 27 total: 91
3 ?? Japan ? 22 ? 10 ? 14 total: 46
4 ?? Australia ? 17 ? 5 ? 19 total: 41
5 ? Not Russia ? 16 ?22 ? 20 total: 58
6 ?? Great Britain ? 16 ? 18 ? 17 total: 51
7 ?? Germany ? 9 ? 9 ? 16 total: 34
8 ?? France ? 7 ? 11 ? 9 total: 27
9 ?? Italy ? 7 ? 10 ? 18 total: 35
10 ?? Netherlands ? 7 ? 9 ? 10 total: 26