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

Remco in the (rare) air

Belgium’s cycling wonder boy suffered an ill-timed punctured tire in the Paris asphalt four kilometres from the finish line but did not deflate while riding solo towards a commanding win in the road race, just a week after claiming gold in the time trial event. With his unprecedented Olympic double in the men’s category, Remco Evenepoel put a golden ribbon on his 2024 French summer, which started out with a third place in the podium of the Tour de France, just behind Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, winners of the last five editions.

Countrymen and women flocked the cobbled streets of Montmartre and other iconic sites of the French capital on a sunny Saturday afternoon to edge on the man who, just four years ago, suffered a gruesome fall during the Tour de Lombardie that put his career in jeopardy.

Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel, from the Netherlands, was the only other cyclist to claim the Olympic double in the women’s category at the 2000 Sydney Games. After the Tour declined to close out in the famed Champs Élysées for the first time in half a century because of schedule issues with these Summer Games, Parisians were starved for cycling and got a mouthful of riding brilliance by the 24 year-old-Belge, whose Olympic debut was one for the ages.

Biles. ‘Nuff said

What else is there? Three years after she experienced the case of ‘the twisties’ in Tokyo, Simone Biles is back on top the world after netting her third gold in Paris and seventh overall with the American gymnastics team as she dominated the vault event. Having survived the Larry Nassar abuse scandal from 2016 and coming back stronger than ever from mental health issues, the Ohio native is a walking, jumping, flipping and smiling symbol of brilliance and endurance.

Biles doesn’t make her jumps look easy, because they aren’t. But she makes the apparently impossible, possible. And that’s quite the feat in 2024. In her third Olympics, she has bettered Nadia Comaneci mark of nine total medals and stood above the competition while attracting the most attention from random gymnastics lovers and a flock of celebrities, from Tom Cruise to Lady Gaga and Snoop Dog at the French Capital. A brilliant show of ‘grandeur’, indeed.

US makes a splash… in a good way

It has been quite the geopolitical and sporting showdown between the USA and China in the swimming competition, as suspicions of doping by swimmers from the Asian country reached a high point this spring, after The New York Times reported that 23 of its athletes had tested positive for trimetazidine before the past Tokyo Games.

A war of words ensued between the World Anti-Doping Agency and national counterpart USADA and repercussion escalated all the way to the US Congress and even conditioned the recent decision by the International Olympic Committee to award the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake.

But Saturday was game time and the Americans not only collected an expected ninth Olympic gold from Katie Ledecky in the 800m freestyle, which tied her for the most all-time, but also celebrated a world record in the 4x100m mixed medley relay race thanks to the Ryan Murphy-Nic Fink-Gretchen Walsh-Torri Huske quartet, who clocked 3min 37.43sec to narrowly edge the Tokyo Games mark set by Great Britain. Better even, they defeated the Chinese team led by suspected doper Zhang Yufei, who was relegated to silver with a time of 3:37.55. Regarding to the pool at least, the tests results are in.

Caribbean surprises

The day started out chilly, drifted to sunny and ended with moderate rain on the Stade de France track, where St. Lucia' s Julien Alfred and the West Indies’ Thea LaFond claimed the first-ever Olympic medals for the two tiny islands from the Caribbean.

France’s Anais Bourgoin lit up the home crowd early with cheers that resonated from the banlieues all the way to the centric Paris cafés as residents sat down for a lazy Saturday brunch and celebrated her 800m win… in the heats. Yet it was quite the race, and her final acceleration in the last 50 metres was pretty similar to Femke Bol’s definite push that gave the Netherlands’ the 4x400m mixed relay victory.

As much as Bol’s prowess was expected, so was a dominant showing in the 100m final by American world champion Sha'Carri Richardson, but she was upstaged by Alfred; and LaFond followed through on the Caribbean surprise department by claiming the triple jump, a throne that was wide open after Venezuelan superstar Yulimar Rojas dropped out of the Paris Games due to injury.

Khelif rumbles on

Much to her dislike, Amine Khelif became the focus of attention on Thursday and well into the weekend after her bout with Italian Angela Carini ended after two punches and 46 seconds in the 66kg category. The Algerian boxer, who had been disqualified from the Delhi World Championships last year after failing unspecified gender tests by the International Boxing Association, prevailed on the ring Saturday, despite all the hubbub, and dominated her fight against Anna Luca Hamori, of Hungary.

"It's a battle, it's for my dignity," said Khelif, who guaranteed herself a bronze medal with her semi-final participation next Tuesday against Janjaem Suannapheng, from Thailand. Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting, the other boxer facing intense scrutiny for the same reasons, can also guarantee herself at least a bronze on Sunday when she faces Bulgaria's Svetlana Staneva in the quarter-finals of the women's 57kg.

After losing to Khelif, Hamori, whose national federation had attacked the Algerian pre-bout, embraced her rival and shook hands. A simple gesture amidst the noise.