[attach id=525059 size="medium"]Emese Szasz – fencing gold medal.[/attach]

Fencing: Hungary took its third women’s gold in Olympic fencing since 2000 as Emese Szasz bounced back from a first-match loss in London to beat Italy’s world champion Rossella Fiamingo. Sun Yiwen’s third-place finish helped Chinese fans forget the shocking 15-8 loss by her team-mate Xu Anqi, ranked first in the world, to Frenchwoman Marie-Florence Candassamy in her first bout. Hungarian women are second only to the Italians in Olympic medals, but had not topped the podium since Timea Nagy took back-to-back golds in the epee event in Sydney and Athens.

Tennis: Serena Williams progressed through the first round of the Rio Olympics tennis yesterday despite an error-strewn performance that was not helped by windy conditions that delayed play on most of the smaller tennis courts. Williams won 6-4 6-2 against Australia’s Daria Gavrilova, ranked 42 in the world, but she was far from her best.

Cycling: Dutch rider Anna van der Breggen produced a perfectly-timed burst to snatch Olympic gold in a dramatic climax to the women’s road race yesterday. Her team-mate Annemiek van Vleuten was on course for victory but suffered a horrific-looking crash with around 10km left. American Mara Abbott was left as the sole leader on the flat run in to the finish line but she was caught by Van Der Breggen, Emma Johansson, of Sweden, and Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini. Johansson took the silver with Longo Borghini third.

Shooting: Catherine Skinner, of Australia, battled to the end of a tense final in women’s trap shooting to win the gold medal yesterday, edging out Natalie Rooney, of New Zealand. The 26-year-old Skinner hit 12 of her 15 orange targets with her shotgun to Rooney’s 11. American Corey Cogdell won her second bronze medal by besting Spain’s Fatima Galvez in a shoot-off. Defending Olympic champion Jessica Rossi, of Italy, crashed out in the semi-finals.