Rio finally gets a good taste of villainy: Best of Olympics Day 10

The National's sports team is helping you keep up to date with the best of what is happening at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

France's Renaud Lavillenie. Lee Jin-man / AP Photo / August 15, 2016

• Also: Usain Bolt is an Incredible: Best of Olympics Day 9

The National’s sports team is helping you keep up to date with what is happening in Rio while most of us in the UAE were sleeping. Here is today’s Daily 5.

1 The villain we deserve

The Olympics need villains, just as much as they need heroes.

Your Justin Gatlins for your Usain Bolts. Your Tonya Hardings for your Nancy Kerrigans. Your dopers, your malcontents.

It’s exceedingly rare, unfortunately, for the Olympics to actually deliver explicit villains (case in point: Justin Gatlin is probably a strained example, and probably deserves a break already).

But Renaud Lavillenie, the pole vaulter, rose to the occasion on Monday night. He was just the right foil for Thiago Braz da Silva, the home hero in Rio.

Lavillenie, the record holder, the overwhelming favourite, a champion with a slight arrogance streak. Heck, “villainy” is in his name.

The Frenchman, needing to match Da Silva at 6.03 metres, could not in either of his first two attempts. So, naturally, he tried to go higher on his third.

He didn’t clear 6.08m, either.

The confidence wasn’t so misplaced, exactly – his world record, set in February 2014, is 6.16m. But the unnecessary raising of the degree of difficulty aptly proved rash.

Even that though in and of itself wouldn’t have been so egregious.

His failure was Da Silva’s triumph, and the Brazilian crowd wildly welcomed the home gold. They also unfortunately jeered Lavillenie in his loss, an inelegant at best breach of Olympic etiquette.

This is understandably frustrating. Still, you could take that on the chin and depart with a bit of gravitas.

Or you could compare yourself to Jesse Owens.

“In 1936 the crowd was against Jesse Owens. We’ve not see this since. We have to deal with it,” Lavillenie said.

Astonishingly misplaced and historically questionable analogy wasn't all. The 29-year-old also said he was "disappointed" and "very, very sad" and that it was "horrible" and "disturbed me" and was a "lack of respect" and "an insult". And on, and on, it went.

“I think the crowd spoilt the experience for a lot of pole vaulters tonight.”

Certainly, at least, one.

Now to be fair, Lavillenie is a great pole vaulter and a great Olympian. One ill-advised rant and an especially misguided sense of victimhood shouldn't define him (and, hey, he apologised).

But the Olympics, so often lacking in good villainy, finally got a nice dose of it on Monday night.

2 She wanted it

Man, did you see Shaunae Miller? Did you see her dive across the finish line? Did you see her eat track, hard, to win a gold medal?

You should. Athletes talk about "blood, sweat and tears" a lot. That was literally blood, sweat and tears. Shaunae Miller is a rock star.

Some are arguing she actually stumbled, naturally. I don't know that I believe that. I like to imagine the sheer desire it takes to disregard completely the well-being of one's knees and elbows and lunge oneself headlong into uh, whatever Mondotrack is.

“What was in my mind was I had to get a gold medal,” she said. “The next thing I was on the ground.”

On the ground, a gold medal winner.

3 Other highlights from Day 10

• Sharon van Rouwendaal won the marathon swim and made our cover.

• Another Dutch victory came via gymnastics, where Sanne Wevers was the beneficiary of Simone Biles' slip-up in the balance beam apparatus event.

• Kenya’s David Rudisha became the first man since Peter Snell to win successive 800m titles at an Olympics. New Zealander Snell did that back in 1964.

• Poland’s Anita Wlodarczyk set a new world record in the hammer throw, beating her own, previous mark by over a metre with an 82.29m throw. The old best, which she set last year at a tournament in Poland, was 81.08m. Wlodarcyzk first broke the world record in 2009, back when it was still under 78m. She lost it to German Betty Heldler in 2011 and got it back in August of 2014, at 79.58m. In all, she’s bested the record five times now in her career, three times beating herself.

• The United States leads in the medal count with 75 (26 gold), followed in golds by Great Britain (41 overall) and in overall by China with 46 (15 gold). We're keeping track of all the gold medal winners.

4 Tweet of the day

Across that first red line, Shaunae Miller’s torso hits the finish just ahead of Allyson Felix.

Shaunae Miller's dive, synchronised swimming and more: Best of Rio Olympics Day 10 in pictures https://t.co/MEONfusfMb

5 Video of the day

American fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad sends an important message with her Rio 2016 achievements:

U.S. fencer @IbtihajMuhammad just won bronze at the #Olympics. She's pushing for more participation in sports.https://t.co/Rhfiha9ZKc