Olympics diary

The host nation is celebrating its first medal of the Olympics after the Greek pair of Thomas Bimis and Nikolaos Siranidis won gold in the synchronised diving.

But that only followed a bizarre sequence of events which started midway through the penultimate round of dives when a man half-dressed in traditional Greek costume invaded the pool.

The Chinese, who had been leading until that point, recorded a no dive with their final attempt, one of the Russians hit his foot on the board and the Americans also went to pieces.

The result was that Bimis and Siranidis, who had faced a battle just to medal, shot into the lead prompting wild celebrations.

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Tensions were running high in the main press conference room at the Aquatics Centre last night.

Chinese swimmer Xuejuan Luo, who won the women’s 100 metres breaststroke, was centre stage giving her post-race interview on camera when Dutch star Pieter van den Hoogenband, silver medallist in the men’s 200m freestyle, strode in to the room and parked himself stage left.

Immediately there was a huge commotion as Dutch journalists leapt to their feet, moved in front of the cameras, and made a beeline for van den Hoogenband, sparking off a near diplomatic incident in the process with the Greek press officer supposedly in charge of proceedings berating the Dutch journalists and apologising to Xuejuan for disrespecting her.

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If table tennis is a young man’s sport it seems nobody bothered to tell 41-year-old Johnny Huang of Canada and 42-year-old Spaniard He Zhiwen.

Although both lost in their second round matches they proved they can still compete at international level.

He Zhiwen lost to Lucjan Blasczczyk of Poland (12 years younger than him) while Huang was beaten by 29-year-old Aleksandar Karakasevic of Serbia & Montenegro.