Here are five takeaways from Day Nine at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

A golden treasure chest

Ever the provocateur, Novak Djokovic’s relationships with tennis fans has always been dicey, but the Roland Garros crowd had no choice but to bow down to the all-time leader in Majors wins after the Serb outduelled Spanish wonderboy and Paris sweetheart Carlos Alcaraz on his way to claiming his first Olympic gold medal.

The match was pure tennis theatre, with a tight 7-6 (7/3), 7-6 (7/2) victory for the 37-year-old Djokovic and plenty of signature shots from both sides and all angles. With Swiss great Roger Federer retired and Rafa Nadal struggling to regain his past form, ‘Nole’ can now look dead-eye to both his generational peers and say they haven’t won any major tournament that he hasn’t.

The far younger Alcaraz, who had beaten the veteran in the last two Wimbledon finals and was playing on his preferred surface, was as mighty an opponent that Djokovic could face, just eight weeks removed from knee surgery and two days after tweaking it. At the end though, the Serb flagbearer was the one who finally tasted the gold as the teary-eyed Spaniard came up short on his first Olympics try.

Lyles just wins, baby

American sprinter Noah Lyles has a big mouth and strong legs. He needed all the muscles in them at full throttle on Sunday to walk the walk after talking the talk in his lead-up to the Paris Olympics and, despite some suspense, was finally able to celebrate his first gold medal in the 100 metres.

It was indeed a tight one, as only five thousandths of a second separated Lyles from Kishane Thompson; and the eight-placed Oblique Seville, also from Jamaica, didn’t lag that far behind in the closest Olympic 100m finish in modern history. For a moment it seemed that victory might go to Thompson, but after some uncertainty, the photo-finish showed the Florida native crossing the finish line ahead of the pack by a hair.

The 100 metres dash, always the highlight of the track & field programme, can no longer claim a global superstar of Usain Bolt’s stature but featured quite the murderer’s row of first class sprinters in the Stade de France. Lyles, in the end, delivered. As American football legend Al Davis famously said, “Just win, baby”. And that, his countryman does. A lot.

World-record pool party

While the war of words between the World Ani-Doping Agency and the US sporting world rages on after the Chinese swimmers’ doping scandal erupted in April, spectators at the La Défense Arena, the Parisian venue for swimming competitions, are getting used to seeing records broken. And wouldn’t you know it? The USA and China were the ones at the forefront in the 1,500 freestyle and the men's and women's 4x100 relays.

It was American Bobby Finke, winner of this event at Tokyo 2020, who broke the 14.30 barrier, with 14min 30.67sec in the 1500m freestyle, besting the 14min 31.02sec mark set by China's Sun Yang in London 2012. This came after China's Zhanle Pan had won in the 100m freestyle earlier in the week with the first swimming world record of Paris 2024 and led the Asian country to another win and WR on the 4x100 men’s relay next to Jiajun Sun, Haiyang Qin and Jiayu Xu, registering a time of 3min 31.58sec.

Meanwhile, the US powered to Olympic gold in the women's 4x100m medley relay and ensured it finished top of the medals table in swimming with eight golds to Australia's seven. It was the perfect end to a strong Games for the American women with the team of Regan Smith, Lilly King, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske hitting the wall in 3min 49.63sec to make it three world records for the day.

The twitch, the screech, the sorrow

To the naked eye, badminton might not evoke great images or memories of epic sporting brilliance or attrition, yet it can be a brutal sport, where top technical skills are refined through the years, fitness is paramount and the mental edge can often mean the difference between victory and defeat as players go back and forth frantically, bend awkwardly and repeatedly put their bodies to the test.

If someone can attest to that, it’s Carolina Marin, who suffered a devastating knee injury on Sunday while competing for a spot in the women’s final. The three-time world champion, who won gold in Rio 2016 but missed out on Tokyo three years ago after two knee injuries in 2019 and 2021, had come a long way to make it to Paris 2024, an unprecedented recovery for an athlete in her sport, where one leg surgery can often be enough to call it quits. Yes, badminton is not for the light-hearted or physically fragile.

Yet the 31-year-old Spaniard was dominating on her way to the final when her right knee twitched, a chilling screech followed and, just like that, her Olympic dream was over. Warm applause from the Paris crowd followed, as global sorrow crept all the way to Spain’s sporting instances, who suggested she be awarded an honorary bronze by the International Olympic Committee. But champions like Marin don’t do honorary: they win or go home with their chin up, crutches and all.

Nemour’s ‘non-merci’

While France struggles to define its political future amidst a far-right, anti-immigration surge, teenager Kaylia Nemour offered landmark Olympic gymnastics win for Africa on the second day of the apparatus finals at Bercy.

"I'm so shocked, it's the dream of all my life. I can't believe it has happened, I'm speechless," said Nemour, who was born in France but, after feuding with the national federation in the lead-up to Paris 2024, decided to nationalise herself Algerian and produced "the performance of her life" to claim the uneven bars title and become the first African to win an Olympic gymnastics medal.

The 17-year-old took the gold medal with a stunning high-flying acrobatic performance that netted her a 15.700-points rating with the judges and upset Chinese world champion Qiu Qiyuan, who took silver, as well as American Sunisa Lee, who was relegated to bronze and said watching Nemour on bars "is like watching a feather".

The “feather” had the weight on her shoulder after issuing a Cyrano de Bergerac-type ‘non merci’ to French Gymnastics, whose Paris 2024 team has failed miserably to meet expectations. But Nemour shined at the Bercy Arena, much to the delight of Africans everywhere.