Olympics 2024 live: Latest Team GB news and ceremony tickets still unsold

LeBron James wasn’t totally sure what the opening ceremony was all about when he was picked for his first Olympics in 2004.

This time, he’ll be one of the stars of the show.

James has been picked by his fellow US Olympians to serve as the male flagbearer for the Americans in Friday night’s opening ceremony for the Paris Games.

Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japan women’s artistic gymnastics team, has withdrawn from the squad for Paris 2024 after violating the team’s code of conduct by smoking, the Japanese Gymnastics Association said on Friday.

JGA officials said Miyata arrived in Japan on Thursday after leaving the team’s training camp in Monaco for investigation, which confirmed the violation including drinking alcohol.

“We apologise from the bottom of our hearts for this,” JGA President Tadashi Fujita said, bowing deeply along with other officials including Miyata’s personal coach, Mutsumi Harada.

It could be a golden Games for Team GB at the Stade de France as a strong athletics squad heads to Paris with plenty of medal contenders. But a controversial selection policy has attracted plenty of criticism ahead of the Olympics, as Ben Bloom explains:

Australia-based Kimia Yousofi has been included in Afghanistan’s team for the Paris Olympics and the sprinter says she will be representing the “stolen dreams and aspirations” of Afghan women back home who are being denied the chance to take part in sport.

The Taliban have restricted women’s access to parks and gyms since seizing power in August 2021, prompting women athletes like Yousofi to flee the country to escape prosecution.

The International Olympic Committee announced last month a gender-equal team of six athletes would represent Afghanistan in Paris but no Taliban official would be allowed.

The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) confirmed Yousofi, Afghanistan’s flag bearer at Tokyo 2020, has been selected for what will be her third appearance at the Games.

Morgan, a four-time Olympic veteran, was the most notable absence on the 18-player roster that Hayes announced on Wednesday.

The 34-year-old Morgan missed more than a month with the San Diego Wave after she injured her left ankle on April 19, but she had since returned. She also was named to the squad Hayes assembled for a pair of U.S. friendlies against South Korea earlier this month.

Morgan, who has 123 goals in 224 appearances with the national team, missed the latest Wave match last weekend as an excused absence.

The 2024 summer Olympics are almost upon us, with this year’s Games taking place in Paris.

Three years on from the delayed, Covid-hit Tokyo Games, certain athletes will return to the Olympic stage in a bid to replicate previous glories, while others will seek to improve upon past performances.

Elsewhere, there will be athletes making their Olympic debuts, and below we’ve got you covered with some of the key athletes and events to watch.

Keep your eye out for one or two British medal hopes…

But many sports have been introduced since the marathon at the first modern Games in Athens in 1896.

Tokyo 2020, which eventually took place in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, welcomed three new sports to the Olympic family.

Paris will provide a first outing for breaking, while other sports will expand the number of events with on show.

Here’s a look at breaking and what’s new for Paris 2024:

Team GB’s major medal hopes for the Paris Olympics span sports and generations, from a 16-year-old skateboarder to a trampolinist aiming to grab gold and complete her full set of medals over three Games.

Here are seven Brits to watch in the French capital.

Maksym Halinichev won silver at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires in a match described at the time as “two of the best young fighters going for glory.”

He considered the bout a loss – it wasn’t gold, after all – but it gave him a map for the future.

So Halinichev made plans: He would defeat that boxer the next time around. He would teach his daughter the basics of his sport so she could defend herself. And he would win a medal for Ukraine at the Paris Olympics.

Halinchev outlined those ambitions as an athlete in an interview for the Ukraine Boxing Federation website in December 2021, as Russian troops were already massing at Ukraine’s borders.

Asked if he was afraid before a fight, he described his thinking.

Embattled French president Emmanuel Macron has been in the Olympic Village today, enjoying a spot of lunch with a few French sporting stars, including Antoine Dupont. Dupont and the rest of the men’s rugby sevens field will kick off the Olympics on Wednesday, with the best player on the planet driving the hosts’ hopes in an event in which they could well medal.