Team GB take flight to celebrate first Olympic silver and bronze medals | Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Team GB celebrated their best start to an Olympic Games in more than four decades with Anna Henderson winning silver in the women’s road time trial and divers Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen taking bronze at the Paris Aquatics Centre.

A British team had not won a medal on the first official day of the Olympics since 2004 and last won two at the Moscow Games in 1980, but gutsy performances and a bit of luck have delivered early success and raised fresh hopes of a record this summer.

Yet it was among the 80,000 people packed into the Stade de France that the loudest and most resounding cheers were heard, as the lightning-quick feet and seemingly infallible judgement of their star rugby sevens player, Antoine Dupont, gave the French team their first gold medal of the Games by creating a try and scoring two against Fiji.

Earlier in the day, heavy rain had forced organisers in Paris to postpone skateboarding and delay tennis, but Mew Jensen and Harper were free to try to secure a first women’s diving medal since 1960 for Britain in the pool, while Tom Daley watched and knitted in the stands.

Chinese pair Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen, undefeated at world level since 2022 in women’s 3m synchronized diving, were able to easily win gold and the American team of Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook won silver.

It looked like Australia’s Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith were also on course for third place, but a slip from Smith that saw her fly off the edge of the board pushed them into despair and down to fifth.

“We knew Australia had to make a mistake, basically,” said Mew Jensen, 22, of London. “So we were pretty shocked to see that happen because it’s a very easy dive for them. They’re very talented, very experienced.”

Harper, 23, from Sheffield, added: “We knew it was going to be close. To see them not perform in the last round – I think I knew straight away it wasn’t good enough.”

“I think in diving you can kind of tell where or roughly where the score is going to be.

“So for us, I think we knew it, but at the same time, we’re still waiting for the scoreboard to come up and show whether we did it or not.”

Smith, who was crying into a towel as he exited the pool, later admitted: “I screamed underwater.”

Soon after, it was Henderson’s turn to claim Olympic glory. She was beaten easily by Australian veteran Grace Brown, but then edged out American Chloe Dygert for silver by less than a second in the women’s cycling time trial after the American crashed on the dangerously slippery roads of central Paris.

Henderson, 25, from Hemel Hempstead, said: “I can’t believe it. I felt like I could get on the podium today and overtake some of the other riders, but I can’t believe I came second to someone like Grace.

“I burst into tears when I found out I was second. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was a little confusing because the TV was really far behind and I couldn’t see the scoreboard here. I knew I had a medal, which was amazing in itself, and then you had to figure out if it was silver or bronze.”

The GB women’s team had been predicted to do particularly well this summer and the opening results will give confidence that the upper limit of 50-70 medals predicted by UK Sport can be achieved.

Britain’s 30 medals in Athens rose to 51 in Beijing, while the 65 medals won in London were eclipsed by the 67 medals won in Rio. The 64 medals won at the Covid-postponed Tokyo Games had been seen as a slightly disappointing result, albeit one achieved in difficult circumstances.

Great Britain’s men’s ice hockey team got their campaign off to a flying start with a 4-0 win over Spain but hopes of a quick British gold medal in Paris will focus on 29-year-old Adam Peaty, who, after qualifying for the 100m breaststroke semi-finals on Saturday night as the second fastest qualifier in 59.18 seconds in the swimming heats, told reporters: “The whole field was a bit slow.”

“I have a really good mindset,” he added of his approach to Sunday’s final. “If I relax, I don’t feel like I’m here right now, but this swim wakes up the mind. I think it’s just an experience of knowing I don’t have to expend any energy here.”

Peaty’s main obstacle to a third consecutive Olympic gold medal is Qin Haiyang, who was among 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics but were allowed to compete after anti-doping authorities accepted China’s explanation that their hotel kitchen had been contaminated.

“It’s always in the mind of an athlete,” Peaty said when asked about doping in sport. “You definitely want a fair game, you want to win fairly and be surrounded by people who are doing the same thing and living by the same values. But at the same time, you know, we have a job to do and we can’t let this be a cloud over the road.”

Organisers were generally relieved to see the Games go ahead without further major incident, after the sabotage of France’s railway system and the sometimes spectacular but decidedly soggy opening ceremony on the Seine, which suffered from bad weather.

SNCF boss Jean-Pierre Farandou said he hoped the transport network would return to normal by Monday, but 160,000 of the 800,000 people who were due to travel this weekend have had to deal with cancellations.

Nearly a third of trains have been cancelled in the north, west and east of France and one in four Eurostar services between London and Paris have also failed to depart.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the investigation into those responsible for the attack was progressing.

“We have uncovered a number of elements which suggest that we will soon know who is responsible for what clearly did not sabotage the Olympic Games but did sabotage part of the French people’s holidays,” he said.