UAE Olympic gold hunt: Sheikh Saeed keeps alive hopes in shooting

Five-time Olympian Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum stayed on course to make it to the final round of men's Skeet competition at the Rio Olympics by shooting an aggregate score of 70 after three rounds on Friday.

Sheikh Saeed consistently fired rounds of 23, 24 and 23 to keep alive his hopes of qualifying at the end of day one.

The men's Skeet qualification rounds will continue on Saturday with the top six moving to the semifinals.

Saif Bin Futtais had a good third round score of 24 to finish on 68 points but has lot of catching up to do in the next two rounds.

Sheikh Saeed is placed 14th out of 32 competitors while Saif Bin Futtais is lying in 24th position with an aggregate of 68.

Sweden Marcus Svensson leads the field with three perfect rounds for a maximum score of 75.

Swimming

Nada Al Bedwawi clocked 33.42 seconds to come third in the first heat of the women's freestyle event.

The 18 year-old Olympic debutant's time gained her 47th place out of 59 swimmers in the event.

Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum has fired a brilliant 24 in the second round of qualification in the men's Skeet for an aggregate of 47 to stay among the leaders.

Sweden's Marcus Svensson shot another perfect round to lead with 50 points.

Saif Bin Futtais improved on his first round score achieving a score of 23 to stay in contention with 44 points.

Athletics

UAE's Alia Saeed Mohammed finished in 23rd position out of 37 runners, two of whom did not finish, clocking a time of 31:56.24 which was off her personal best.

Ethiopia's Almaz Ayana obliterated the field in the women's 10,000m finals with a spectacular run to win the first gold in athletics in Rio in a world record time of 29 minutes 17.45 seconds.

Kenya's world champion Vivian Cheruiyot finished a distanct second while Ethiopian star Tirunesh Dibaba took the bronze.

The 24-year-old Ayana pulled away from the field midway through the race and never let up before powering home in 29min 17.45sec.

Her winning time was nearly 14 seconds quicker than the previous world best over the distance of 29:31.78 set by Wang Junxia in Beijing in 1993.

Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya took silver while defending champion Tirunesh Dibaba took bronze.

Alia Saeed Mohammed has entered the arena for the women's 10,000m finals which has 37 runners facing the starter.