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The Paris Olympics are well underway and Team GB are starting to fill the medals cabinet nicely, with the first golds arriving on day three, Monday, following a weekend collection of silver and bronzes.
There’s plenty more to come too it would appear, with athletics, swimming and equestrian events all typically strong from a Great Britain perspective as the team looks to beat their own haul of 22 golds from Tokyo three years ago.
And while the live broadcasts and highlights make the visuals of the Games and those exciting medal moments highly accessible, more recent years have seen athletes be more able to share their own moments in a variety of different ways, in part down to social media of course, but also through a variety of other technological advances and apps.
On the latter, Team GB athletes posting to Strava - an app which records and maps physical activity - is allowing them to share their own photos and best moments, along with detailed insight to the courses they’ve had to navigate to achieve a place on the podium in Paris. Others use different apps including Garmin Connect, Nike Run Club or - for virtual or indoor cyclists - Zwift, which do similar.
One of the best early Paris 2024 moments for GB came with Kimberley Woods and her bronze medal in the kayak slalom, with the athlete posting a few emotional images to her activity along with the medal-winning 1.8km route itself.
Entirely justifably, her pride was shown in the caption as well as the pictures.
Of a slightly more lengthy nature, a silver medal went to Anna Henderson on the same day in the individual road cycling time trial, 41 minutes and 12 seconds of movement time captured across more than 32km of Paris streets.
Somewhat hilariously given the nondescript nature of it, Henderson initially hadn’t altered her activity from the default - so for an Olympic podium-quality performance we simply had “Afternoon Ride” as her effort!
That soon changed with the line “beyond my wildest dreams” a superb reflection of her victorious charge.
The criss-crossing of the Sixth Arrondissement, across the river and around the enormous Bois de Vincennes park gave her an official competitive time of 41:09.83.
More success could yet be ahead for Henderson, in the road race on Sunday.
On Wednesday it was the morning of spectacular late comebacks as far as GB were concerned: the women’s sculls wrapped up rowing gold with a breathtaking 0.15 seconds to spare, pipping Netherlands on the final stroke, and in the triathlon - just after Beth Potter had won bronze for the women - it was Alex Yee who produced a truly remarkable final kilometre run to regain 14 seconds on his rival Hayden Wilde and surge across the Pont Alexandre III to take gold for the men.
Unfortunately competition rules stated he could not utilse wearables, so that swim-bike-run can’t be seen in this way - but there were no such restrictions on Imogen Grant, who took gold for Great Britain alongside Emily Craig in the double women’s scull, capturing the moment they banished memories of missing out on a Tokyo medal by 0.01 seconds. There were no such margins this time around as the duo won by 1.72 seconds to take their places atop the podium.
We’ll continue to post and update any further GB successes as the Paris Games go on.
Fans can follow the activities of some of the athletes across the aforementioned apps, and seek out others who might be competing in Paris this month - as well as of course upload their own efforts on road, trail, track and beyond.
