Paris Olympics: Athletics' golds rock US to medal table top spot

Team US Cole Hocker pulled the upset of the Olympic track meet Tuesday night, outracing favourites Jakob Ingebrigsten and Josh Kerr to the finish line in the 1,500 metres.

Hocker won the race in an Olympic record 3 minutes 27.65 seconds, pulling from fifth to first over the final 300 metres to beat his personal best by more than 3 seconds.

He beat Kerr by 14 seconds, while Ingebrigsten, who set the pace through the first 1,200 metres, ended up in fourth behind American Yared Nuguse.

Gabby Thomas sped to the win too, in the women’s 200 metres, finishing in 21.83 seconds to add a gold to the bronze she took home in the event from Tokyo three years ago.

The 27-year-old Harvard graduate, who has a Masters in public health, took the lead for good at the curve and was never challenged in the final stretch.

Ecstasy for Greece too, as Miltiadis Tentoglou won the men's long jump to earn the country's first gold medal in Paris 2024. Tentoglou became only the second man after Carl Lewis to win two consecutive Olympic long jump titles.

But the joy of the Greek delegation was partially sullied by the news of an athlete suspended over a positive doping test. His name wasn't made public.

In other athletics news, Rana Reider, the coach of Olympic champions Andre De Grasse and Marcell Jacobs was banned from the Olympics over sexual misconduct allegations.

Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland of the Netherlands defended their Olympic team sprint gold medal in style Tuesday night, easily beating the British trio of Ed Lowe, Hamish Turnbull and Jack Carlin while shattering their own world record set earlier in the evening.

The Dutch already had a big lead in the three-lap race when van den Berg swung off the front, and Lavreysen