We have lift off. The action at Paris 2024 is underway with men’s football first to kick off. Argentina are facing Morocco at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint Etienne, where the atmosphere sounds electric, while Uzbekistan and Spain are just getting going at the Parc des Princes, too.

The Canadian women’s football team assistant coach and an analyst have been kicked out of the Olympic squad after New Zealand said its team had their training session disrupted by a drone flown by a staff member of their Group A opponents, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) said on Wednesday.

Head coach Bev Priestman has also removed herself from coaching the team against New Zealand in Group A on Thursday, the COC added.

“Joseph Lombardi, an unaccredited analyst with Canada Soccer, is being removed from the Canadian Olympic Team and will be sent home immediately,” COC said in a statement.

“Jasmine Mander, an assistant coach to whom Mr. Lombardi reports to, is being removed from the Canadian Olympic Team and will be sent home immediately.”

Priestman apologised for the offence.

“On behalf of our entire team, I first and foremost want to apologize to the players and staff at New Zealand Football and to the players on Team Canada,” she said.

“This does not represent the values that our team stands for. I am ultimately responsible for conduct in our program.

“Accordingly, to emphasize our team’s commitment to integrity, I have decided to voluntarily withdraw from coaching the match on Thursday. In the spirit of accountability, I do this with the interests of both teams in mind and to ensure everyone feels that the sportsmanship of this game is upheld.”

The drone was flown on Monday and the incident was reported by the NZOC to the police and to the International Olympic Committee’s integrity unit.

After LeBron James was confirmed as one of Team USA’s Paris 2024 flagbearers earlier this week, it’s now been announced that Coco Gauff will join the NBA legend in carrying Old Glory at Friday’s opening ceremony on the Seine.

The small number of Russian and Belarusian athletes will compete under a new banner at Paris 2024 with the Olympic committees of both nations banned from the Games.

At the Olympics, they will compete under a tag of “AIN” – both the acronym and IOC country code. A teal flag has been designed to be raised at a medal ceremony if required.

The IOC has also produced an independent anthem, with no lyrics, to be played for any Russian or Belarusian gold medal winners. They will also not be involved in the opening ceremony.

And though much of the focus will be on the sporting drama, events throughout the world will inevitably be put into the spotlight during a competition that has a long history of political protest and expression.

The war in Ukraine, continued Israeli strikes in Gaza and France’s recent election are just a few events that may be referenced during the Games. The Olympic website says that ”the International Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission and the IOC are fully supportive of freedom of expression”, and while that may be true, some previous events dispute that idea.

So, what are the rules around political protest at the Olympics, and what are the potential punishments for breaking them?

Record medal hauls may be mooted for Team GB when the Paris Olympics get underway in the French capital, but there are some Games venues at which the Union flag will be conspicuous by its absence.

The tentacles of sustained podium success, spread liberally by almost £250m of UK Sport funding for the Paris Olympic cycle alone, have yet to reach the wrestling mats of the Champ-de Mars-Arena or the glittering fencing venue at the Grand Palais.

Besides team sports like volleyball and handball, in which Britain mustered brief token gestures for London 2012, they are the largely forgotten individual sports or disciplines which offer scant hope of a change in fortunes.

Rewinding the clock three years: The Independent’s Lawrence Ostlere is off to Paris to cover the games this week, but three years ago he was just returning from Tokyo. Here’s his look at the success of the “Covid Games”…and how it showed what to expect next time out.

Moments after the American 20-year-old Jagger Eaton had finished competing in the men’s skateboarding street final, having been one of the few Olympians to perform with AirPods in his ears, he pulled out his phone to start an Instagram live video for his near-half a million followers.

It was an example of what the International Olympic Committee (IOC) hoped to gain by introducing new and in some cases controversial sports like skating, surfing, climbing, BMX freestyle and 3×3 “street” basketball. Eaton and Britain’s 13-year-old Sky Brown were exactly the kind of new-age stars the IOC was looking for: young, fearless, with international appeal; entertainers perfect for the digital world, with talent that could be packaged up and spread in bite-sized clips.

An Olympic shake-up had been in the works for a decade or more, and the IOC was particularly alarmed by a sharp fall in viewing figures at Rio 2016 and data which revealed a declining interest among young people. Announcing new events for Tokyo later that year, IOC president Thomas Bach said: “We want to take sport to the youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will automatically come to us. We have to go to them.”

The numbers are expected to show that new sports have helped attract new audiences, often with eye-catching shows of tricks and spins which brought a different kind of entertainment to the Olympics’ traditional ledger. They displayed a different kind of spirit too, with camaraderie forged over many years away from the Olympic spotlight. Climbers worked together to share tips on how to conquer the wall, while skaters rushed to hug and support one another whether they had flown or fallen.

When she steps out onto the cycling track at the Paris Olympics on 27 July, Yulduz Hashimi won’t just be fulfilling a childhood dream. She will also be carrying a flag for all women in Afghanistan who are denied the same sporting opportunities that have taken her to the Olympics.

Hashimi, 24, is one of three Afghan women athletes competing in the 2024 Games. The others are her younger sister Fariba Hashimi, 21, also a cyclist, and Kimia Yousofi, a sprinter who was Afghanistan’s flagbearer at the previous Olympics in Tokyo.

“From the first day of my cycling career, I dreamt that one day I would represent my country in the Olympics, and my dream has now come true. I am so happy now and excited that I am finally participating in the Games,” she tells The Independent.

They aren’t representing their homeland in the traditional sense, because the de facto Taliban government there doesn’t recognise them. Indeed, the Islamist regime doesn’t allow women to play sports at all publicly, or attend school.

World Horse Welfare chief executive Roly Owers says the Charlotte Dujardin horse whipping controversy is a “massive wake-up call for anyone who thinks this is not important”.

The charity welcomed Dujardin’s decision “to take full responsibility and withdraw from the Paris Olympics” after the British Olympian was provisionally suspended by equestrian’s governing body.