By Joe Harvey

This could be the night Keely Hodgkinson’s dreams come true as the women’s 800m final takes centre stage.

The Wiganer burst on to the scene with silver in Tokyo and won medals of the same colour at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships - this feels like her time to make the next step.

Her chances have been boosted by the absence of Athing Mu, who took a tumble in the ruthless US Olympic trials at which there are no second chances.

Hodgkinson has admitted her disappointment over Mu’s absence - she wants to beat the best - but there is no denying the news improves the prospect of Team GB’s first women’s 800m gold since Kelly Holmes at Athens 2004.

She will not have it all her own way, however - far from it. Kenya’s Mary Moraa beat Hodgkinson to World Championship gold in Budapest last year while 17-year-old St Albans sensation Phoebe Gill is set for the next stage of her remarkable rise.

Gill, born almost three years after Holmes stormed home in Athens, broke the 45-year-old European under-18 record by clocking 1:57.86 at the Belfast Irish Milers Meet in May.

She proved that was no fluke by winning the women’s 800m at the UK Championships the following month, sealing her place on the Paris startline

Elsewhere inside the Stade de France, the king of pole vault, Sweden’s Armand Duplantis, will be hoping to continue his reign at the top of his discipline and potentially even build on his 2023 world record of 6.22m on the biggest stage.

Sifan Hassan will be defending her 5,000m title from Tokyo in a stacked field that includes Faith Kipyegon and Beatrice Chebet, while women’s discus gold is also up for grabs with Valarie Allman back to defend her Tokyo crown.

In the velodrome, there are prospects for Great Britain on the track, where the women’s team sprint medals will be decided.

Emma Finucane, Katy Marcant and Sophie Capewell make up the British trio, while the men’s team pursuit gold will be decided on the same night.

At Bercy Arena, a host of artistic gymnastic medals will be up for grabs.

Joe Fraser will fancy his chances of challenging in the men’s parallel bars, in which he was a world champion in 2019 and won European and Commonwealth golds in 2022.

Alice Kinsella has European medals under her belt on the floor and beam, both of which come to a conclusion on the same day.

The men’s basketball 3x3 competition will come to a pulsating finish at La Concorde 1, with Latvia the defending champions having come out on top when the sport made its debut in Tokyo.

And there’s a new event to look forward to in the form of the fast and furious kayak cross, which sees athletes race against each other as well as the clock. In Mallory Franklin, Kimberley Woods, Adam Burgess and Joe Clarke, Britain have medal hopes in the women’s and men’s races.

Do not miss: The women’s team sprint should be a thriller. The Germans are the team to beat having triumphed at the last four World Championships but Britain ran them close at the most recent of those in Glasgow and two of that trio are part of the team in Paris.

Star of the day: Armand Duplantis continues to raise the bar - no pun intended - in men’s pole vault. The affable 24-year-old is the reigning Olympic champion and looks odds-on to defend that crown having set a new world record earlier this year.

Best Brit: It is impossible to look past Hodgkinson, one of Britain’s faces of the Games heading into Paris. The 22-year-old is one of the stars of a pre-Games Channel 4 documentary and has the ability to cement her status as a household name with gold.

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