Almaz Ayana and Katie Ledecky show records made to be broken – like, by a lot: Best of Olympics Day 7

The National's sports team is helping you keep up to date all that his happening at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Here's what you need to know from Day 7.

Ethiopia's Almaz Ayana. Johannes Eisele / AFP / August 12, 2016

• Also: Simone Biles, best ever? Sure looked it: Best of Day 6

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 Why we watch

There has to be a limit to how much athletes can push the physical limits of the human body by now, right?

It makes perfect sense, for instance, that entering the 2016 Olympics the women’s 10,000-metre record was nearly 10 minutes better than what it was in 1966. The women’s 800m freestyle record was over five minutes better than what it was in 1919.

Athletes naturally progress over time, getting better and better, radically so as training and diets have become more scientific and precise the last 30 or so years.

But it’s 2016. Training methods and dietary science have been pretty advanced for a pretty long time now. There can’t be that much more to improve, right? When Rebecca Adlington of Great Britain finally broke the 19-year-old 800m record in 2008, it was by about two seconds. When Katie Ledecky took it five years later, it was by 0.24 seconds. And in the 10,000m, Wang Junxia’s record had stood for 23 years entering these Olympics.

There is supposed to be diminishing returns on athletic advancement, is the point here.

And yet there was Almaz Ayana on Friday, casually cruising across the finish line 14 seconds ahead of Wang’s record time. There was Katie Ledecky, lopping another two seconds off her 800m mark (the fourth time she’s bested herself).

The Olympics are where we take greatest satisfaction in seeing how fast the best among us can run, can swim, how high we can jump and how far we can just throw some stuff. It is a remarkable testament to the determination of these athletes that these records continue to fall, in the fashion they do.

As Ledecky cemented her status as one of the greatest in swimming history – she became the first Olypmian since Debbie Meyer in 1968 to complete a sweep of 200m, 400m and 800m – and as little-fancied Ayana stunned the athletics world (“my doping is training” she said, and we have no fair reason to doubt it at the moment), it was an affirmation of why the Olympics still command the place they do in the sporting, and even global, psyche.

For all the corruption, all the social dysfunction, all the scandal and cynicism that inescapably attend a modern Olympics, that Katie Ledecky can do that and Almaz Ayana can do that is why we still watch.

Why we can still be excited by people running and swimming and ever trying to do it faster and faster.

2 A stunner of a swim

Michael Phelps is 31, and many years removed from his absolute peak. So it’s not a surprise he can have an off race and lose out on a possible gold, even as he’d been perfect so far these Olympics.

It just wasn't supposed to be that guy who beat him. Who is that guy?

Joseph Schooling, a one-time Asian Games gold medallist and a one-time World Championships bronze winner. The Singaporean beat not just Phelps, but stars like Chad le Clos and Laszlo Cseh, for gold in the 100m butterfly.

Schooling, 21, grew up idolising Phelps. On Friday he became the first man from a Southeast Asian nation to win a swimming medal.

Gold no less, over Phelps no less.

3 Other highlights from Day 7

• Rafael Nadal secured the first of a possible two golds in Rio, as he teamed up with Marc Lopez to defeat Romanians Florin Mergea and Horia Tecau. It has been at the Olympics, of all places, that Nadal has looked his most energised in quite a long time. He goes against Juan Martin del Potro – who beat Novak Djokovic in the first round and himself looks his best in ages – in the semi-finals tonight.

• Sweden ousted women's football heavyweights USA on penalties. Hope Solo did not take it well.

• Great Britain won another team cycling gold and Bradley Wiggins entered the record books as the most-medalled British athlete, with his eighth.

• The United States leads in the medal count with 50 (20 gold), followed by China with 37 (12 gold) and seven golds from Japan (24 overall) and Great Britain (22 overall). We're keeping track of all the gold medal winners.

4 Tweet of the day

Historic moment for Saudi Arabia at the Olympics:

5 Video of the day

France’s 6ft 8in Teddy Riner put a hurting on Japan’s Hisayoshi Harasawa in the +100kg Judo final. No, it did not too appear difficult for the 6ft 8in man to win his match.