Italian gold in the cycling Madison: more victories than in Tokyo. Silver for Battocletti in the 10,000. Bronze in weightlifting, rhythmics, taekwondo and triple jump. Water polo, anthem with protest

Italy won the gold medal in the women's Madison track cycling event. It is the 11th for the Italian expedition to Paris 2024: surpassing the result of Tokyo, when there were 10 gold medals. In total, Italy has now collected 36 medals, with bronze medals coming in the evening in taekwondo for Simone Alessio and in the triple jump for Andy Diaz, and silver in the 10,000 metres for Nadia Battocletti. Nothing to do, however, for the 4x100 relay, which came only fourth behind Canada (gold), South Africa (silver) and Great Britain (bronze). The USA were second to last due to an error in the baton handover.

Incredible performance by Vittoria Guazzini and Chiara Consonni, the two Italians with a total score of 37 points. Silver medal to Great Britain with 31 points and bronze to the Netherlands with 28 points. Tears of joy for Chiara Consonni and Vittoria Guazzini for their success. "Phenomenal indeed," Consonni told RaiSport, "in the last part of the race Vittoria also made up for my shortcomings. It was a bit of an improvised madison, but thanks to everyone who helped us and now we have something bigger than ourselves. "That's not true, she had a leg from the Madonna,' says Guazzini of her companion, 'I said 'it's do or die'. And we won the Olympics! This time with our hearts rather than our legs. We grew up together, if someone had told us that, we wouldn't have believed it'.

As for the rest of the Azzurri in the competitions, in weightlifting Italy's Nino Pizzolato won the bronze medal in the 89-kilogram competition. The gold went to Bulgarian Karlos May Nasar, the silver to Colombian Yeison Lopez. Sicilian from Castelvetrano, 28 years old next 20 August, Pizzolato, who is a member of the police force, had also been a bronze medallist at Tokyo 2020, in that case in the 81-kilogram category. Decisive for his third place today was also the decision of the Italian staff to call the challenge, after the Italian had had his momentum cancelled on the third attempt. But then the judges, after reviewing his action on the moviola, ruled that his lift was valid and so Pizzolato moved up to third place, which he then retained. It should be noted that the winner of this competition, the Bulgarian Nasar, lifting a total of 404 kilos between snatch and momentum set a new world record in the category.

Sofia Raffaeli won the bronze medal in individual rhythmic gymnastics at Paris 2024. The Italian finished third in the four rotations of the light apparatus. She scored 136.300 points (35.250 on hoop, 32.900 on ball, 35.900 on clubs and 32.250 on ribbon), placing third behind Germany's Darja Varfolomeev, gold with 142.850 points, and Bulgaria's Boryana Kaleyn, silver with 140.600 points. Raffaeli, who had achieved the best score in Thursday's qualification, paid for a mistake in the ball exercise that effectively took her out of the running for the gold medal. The other Italian competing, Milena Baldassarri, finished eighth with 129.700 points. Raffaeli won the first Olympic medal for Italy in an individual rhythmic gymnastics competition.

More protests from Italian water polo after two appeals were rejected by World Aquatics over refereeing decisions in the match they lost to Hungary in the quarter-finals. The Azzurri listened to the anthem with their backs to the jury table before the match against Spain, valid for the ranking from fifth to eighth place. Immediately after the start of the match, coach Campagna called for a time-out to allow Francesco Condemi to receive the applause of his teammates and the crowd. For the first four minutes of the match the Azzurri did not play.