Athletics at the Paris Olympics: five stand-outs on Day 3

American Sha’Carri Richardson will go for Olympic 100m gold at the Stade de France on Saturday as Noah Lyles competes in men’s heats of the blue riband event.

AFP Sport looks at five stand-outs on Day 3 of competition in track and field.

Men’s 100m

Noah Lyles makes his Paris Olympics bow in heats of the 100m.

The American, who won treble gold at last year’s world championships in Budapest, is hot favourite to add Olympic gold to his medal haul.

Along with Richardson, Lyles was one of the faces of the recently-released Netflix docu-series entitled “Sprint”.

He arrives in Paris on the back of a personal best of 9.81sec at the London Diamond League.

“A personal best and getting faster before Paris,” said Lyles. “I know exactly where I am ahead of Paris.”

Mixed 4x400m relay

Femke Bol gets her bid for a potential treble gold under way in the final of the mixed 4x400m relay.

Bol is one part of one of the greatest rivalries at the Paris Games alongside American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400m hurdles.

Bol is a competitor who likes to compete.

Already this season, she won the 400m flat at the world indoor championships in Glasgow in March, before claiming two more golds and a bronze at the European outdoor championships in Rome in June, not to mention her appearances at various track meets.

Her third tilt at a medal could come in the women’s 4x400m relay.

Women’s 100m

Sha’Carri Richardson aims to complete her three-year journey to Olympic redemption with a gold medal after missing out on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 following a positive test for marijuana.

The 24-year-old Texan stormed to a brilliant 100m victory at last year’s World Championships in Budapest, stunning a high-calibre field from the outside lane.

The American’s path to glory has opened up given the injury absence of Jamaica’s defending champion Elaine Thompson-Herah and Shericka Jackson, who has scratched from the 100m to concentrate on the 200m.

However Richardson, who cruised into Saturday’s semi-finals with the fourth fastest time in heats on Friday, will be wary of the threat posed by veterans Marie-Josee Ta-Lou Smith and two-time Olympic 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryrce.

Ta-Lou Smith topped Friday’s qualifying with a time of 10.87sec while Fraser-Pryce was second quickest in 10.92sec.

Men’s pole vault

Sweden’s Armand Duplantis aims to write another chapter in his incredible dominance of men’s pole vaulting as qualifying for the final gets under way.

The 24-year-old US-born prodigy, often described as a rock star of athletics by World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe, has been practically unbeatable in the event for five years, winning every major title in the sport after finishing with a silver medal at the 2019 World Championships in Doha.

Duplantis won Olympic gold in Tokyo three years ago before winning back-to-back outdoor World Championships in 2022 and 2023. He added two world indoor crowns in 2022 and 2024 as well as three straight European Championship titles in 2018, 2022 and 2024.

The main question surrounding Duplantis is how high he can go. He set a new world indoor record of 6.24m earlier this season, and holds the outdoor record of 6.22m.

Men’s shot put

Ryan Crouser bids for a historic third Olympic title — no man or woman having achieved that — but comes in on the back of elbow and then pectoral muscle injuries.

The 31-year-old American has shown how resilient he is in the past winning last year’s world title despite being diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis less than three weeks before the championships.

He finished runner-up in the Diamond League meet in London just prior to the Games, Italy’s European champion Leonardo Fabbri taking the honours.

Fabbri is in prime position to become Italy’s second ever men’s Olympic shot champion — Alessandro Andrei triumphing in Los Angeles in 1984.

In an event World Athletics supremo Sebastian Coe has praised as being “unmissable” in recent years the wild card could be two-time Olympic silver medallist Joe Kovacs.

At 35 this is likely to be his last Olympics and the old warhorse — coached by his wife Ashley — has shown this season that a fairytale end is a realistic possibility.