Sir Steve Redgrave passed the Olympic flame on to a group of young athletes to light the cauldron in the Olympic Stadium and signal the start of the 2012 Olympic Games on Friday evening.
Team GB have got off to a relatively slow start as far as medals are concerned, though. Lizzie Armitstead won silver in the women’s road race yesterday, and Rebecca Adlington snuck into the final of the women’s 400m freestyle but raised her game to win a bronze.
On Saturday Mark Cavendish and his teammates were unable to recover after losing ground early on in the men’s road race.
Andy Murray confidently progressed past Stanlisav Wawrinka in the first round of the men’s tennis competition 6-3 6-4 on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. Novak Djokovic recovered from losing the first set to beat Italian Fabio Fognini. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was also taken to three sets by his opponent, Thomaz Bellucci.
Agnieszka Radwanska suffered a shock defeat to Julia Goerges of Germany and
Maria Sharapova beat Shahar Peer of Israel 6-2 6-0.
At Wembley, Britain’s footballers followed up a disappointing draw against Senegal with a 3-1 win over the UAE. One of the tournament favourites Spain went out after defeat to Honduras.
Lewis Hamilton led throughout to win the Hungarian Grand Prix ahead of the Lotus pair Kimi Raikkonon and Romain Grosjean.
Fernando Alonso finished ahead of Mark Webber to increase his lead in the drivers’ championship to 40 points. Victory puts Hamilton up to fourth, 47 points of the lead.
Wigan beat Castleford 40-16 to maintain their three-point lead at the top of the Super League with one round of matches remaining. Warrington kept up the pressure on the leaders with a 50-22 thrashing of Bradford, whose chances of making the playoffs were dealt a blow as Hull KR beat Widnes 32-26.
