Sunday at the Olympic Games will see Jade Jones aiming to make new British history in taekwondo, Great Britain’s women’s hockey team will play their first pool match and Simone Biles leads Team USA in the team qualifying.
Jones, the 28-year-old double Olympic taekwondo champion, will start her day’s work in the early hours of the morning British time, with the round of 16 and quarter-finals.
The semi-finals of the -57kg category will then take place at 8:04am and 08:32am, with the final happening at 1:30pm.
In total, 18 meals will be on offer on Sunday including the first medals in the swimming pool. Skateboarding will take centre stage for the first time at the Games too and if conditions allow, the surfing will start with its opening rounds.
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What not to miss
Taekwondo – Jade Jones -57kg category, final at 1.30pm BST
Jones’ progress in taekwondo’s -57kg category will be followed eagerly as she is one of four British women who could make history in Tokyo.
No British female has ever won gold medals at three separate Olympic Games however, Jones, Laura Kenny, Helen Glover and Charlotte Dujardin all arrived at this Games with a chance to do that.
I’m just obsessed with winning. That feeling of being on top of the podium, with the national anthem playing and winning the Olympics, after all of the training and sacrifices is the best feeling ever. I’m just greedy, I just want to win it again. To do something that no-one’s done, I’d be able to retire happy and put my feet up!
Jade Jones
Jones, the two-time reigning Olympic champion, has openly said that anything less than gold is “a fail” in her eyes. Her victories in London and Rio were in front of packed houses, but this time around she’ll need to dig deep and produce without the roar of a crowd, or her family watching.
Since Rio, Jones has won both the World and European titles, and having been the defending champion before, she knows what it’s like to enter a competition with a target on her back.
Swimming – Men’s 400m individual medley, 2.30am BST
Sky Sports Scholar Max Litchfield will be taking to the pool at his second Olympic Games in the 400m individual medley final.
In 2019, he followed up a maiden senior European medal with a first international title at the European Short Course Championships. After missing the 2018 Commonwealth Games due to injury, Litchfield will be eager to show what he’s made of on the big stage.
With Daiya Seto – the swimmer who has won three of the past four world titles – swimming in a home pool, and Chase Kalisz moving closer towards the time that secured his 2017 world title, Litchfield, and every other athlete in the pool, will be under pressure.
Superstars to watch
Simone Biles will take to the Ariake Gymnastics Centre and lead Team USA in women’s qualifying.
At this Games, the five-time Olympic medallist is also aiming to become the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic all-around golds in over 50 years.
Biles has not lost a competition since 2013 and has already stunned in training by showcasing the Yurchenko Double Pike vault. Prior to Biles performing it at the US Classic in April, no female gymnast had attempted it in competition
GO TEAM USA ?? pic.twitter.com/A8rnCgciLI
If Biles performs the vault successfully at the Olympics, then it would then take her name in gymnastics’ code, a skill is named after the person who first performs it at a major competition.
Another of Biles’ most famous skills will be showcased on the floor and it’s already named after her. She first delivered the triple twisting, double backflip – the triple-double – in 2019 and still no other woman has done it in competition.
Team GB Watch
Also in action in the taekwondo will be Bradly Sinden. The 22-year-old became Great Britain’s first male world champion following a victory at the 2019 World Championships and took up the sport to follow in his sister’s footsteps.
Sinden takes part in the -68kg weight division and his outlook on the Games’ delay is that it’s given him an extra year to refine the tactics that he needs to secure gold.
2 x captains ✌️
2 x squads ?
1 Team GB Hockey Team ??@HollieWebb1 @AdamDixon16 @GBHockey #TeamGB #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/b2jWrLEJP0
Great Britain’s women’s hockey team – the outfit that famously secured gold after a winner-takes-all penalty shootout in Rio – will kick-start their campaign on Sunday. The men’s side played their first pool match on Saturday.
The team are situated in Pool A alongside their first opponents of the Games, Germany. India, the Netherlands, South Africa and the 2018 Hockey Women’s World Cup runners-up, Ireland, are also present.
The two teams ranked second and third in the world – Australia and Argentina – sit together in Pool B alongside New Zealand, Spain, China and Japan.
Following the group matches, the quarter-finals will start on Monday, August 2 at the Oi Hockey Stadium and the gold medal match will follow on Friday, August 6.
After taking part in the 100m breaststroke heats the day before, Adam Peaty is almost certainly going to be in semi-final action on Sunday. Until April 30 this year, the top 20 fastest swims recorded in the 100m breaststroke had his name next to them and the returning Olympian believes that his best is yet to come.
“It’s not an arrogant thing, it’s just a mindset that we’ve built up,” Peaty said. “I want to go out there and do what I do. And if I do perform, then I don’t think many people would get close.”
Success in his semi-final would see the world record holder swim for a second 100m breaststroke Olympic title on Monday.
Where the medals will be won
At the Ariake Sports Park, the men’s street event will open skateboarding’s Olympic journey. At 00:30am BST the first of four preliminary heats will take place before the men’s street final starts at 4:25am BST.
There will be 20 skaters starting the day, with around eight making the final showdown. Four-time World Championship and 12-time Summer X Games winner Nyjah Huston is the hot favourite, but he lost out to Japan’s Yuto Horigome in the Olympic qualifying event in June.
In cycling, the women’s road race will take place with the traditionally strong Dutch team arriving with power in their ranks again. They have won the last four World Championships’ road races, as well as the events at London 2012 and Rio 2016.
Within the peloton of 67 riders, there will be Marianne Vos and Anna van der Breggen – the gold medallists in 2012 and 2016 – while Australia’s Amanda Spratt and Italy’s Elisa Borghini will be looking to make waves too.
The top placings in women’s team archery, women’s synchronised 3m springboard diving and the women’s foil and men’s epee fencing will also be decided over the course of Sunday too.
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