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Olympics Closing Ceremony being re-broadcast 7:00 PM CST.
Find on your local channel
Olympics Closing Ceremony being re-broadcast 7:00 PM CST.
Find on your local channel
I think over all we did a decent job with updates between the 2 of us.
I'm looking forward to the ParaOlympics now and hope they have the same success.
I wonder if that particular horse will have difficulty performing again.
I hope the games survive. Every 4 years we see the best and sometimes the worst.
The guy punching the horse comes to mind.
Tokyo Olympics Closing Ceremony in Pictures
Wrap up an extraordinary Olympics and see Tokyo hand off to Paris with the top moments in pictures from the Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony
Published August 8, 2021 • Updated 5 hours ago
Fireworks erupt above the stadium during the Closing Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on Aug. 8, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan.
The United States of America athletes walk in during the closing ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/sports/tokyo-summer-olympics/tokyo-olympics-closing-ceremony-in-pictures/2666901/
Athletes carry their nations' flags to the field of play during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, on Aug. 8, 2021 at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.
[...]
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/sports/tokyo-summer-olympics/tokyo-olympics-closing-ceremony-in-pictures/2666901/
Y/W. There were alot of interesting results, stories, interviews, etc.
And the top quality photos from various sources adds to all of it
For both of us it is a labor of love every 4 years.
There have been some great stories coming out from these games.
Great job covering the Olympics! - thanks.
I hope the games survive. Every 4 years we see the best and sometimes the worst.
The guy punching the horse comes to mind.
Then we also see people who will help a competitor up off the track and even though they have no chance of winning they still finish the race.
And we have also witnessed 2 people who faced with a jump off asked if they could have 2 Golds.
A gay parent adopts a kid and he goes to the Olympics.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-diver-adopted-cambodia-raised-gay-dad-hopes-inspire-others-rcna1583
There are so many human interest stories from these Olympics that have gone unnoticed.
Closing Ceremony
Live coverage of the Closing Ceremony of the 2020 Olympic Games from the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan.
Closing Ceremony
Started at 5:15am CDT
https://stream.nbcolympics.com/closing-ceremony?cid-msn
How Much Longer Can the Olympics Survive?
The international spectacle has become increasingly synonymous with overspending, corruption, and autocratic regimes.
By Yasmeen Serhan
6:00 AM ET
When Tokyo bids farewell to the Olympics this weekend, few people there will be sad to see it go. The Japanese public overwhelmingly opposed hosting the postponed Summer Games, fearing that it could exacerbate the country’s COVID-19 outbreak. In the final week of the competition, Japan broke a record no one wanted, reporting more than 14,000 cases a day—its highest since the pandemic began.
Whether staging the Games was worth the public-health risk or the staggering price tag that came with it will ultimately be for Japan to decide. But as the world looks ahead to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and debates participating in them despite China’s well-documented human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and elsewhere, perhaps the question isn’t when and where the Games should be held, but whether the modern Olympics—an international spectacle that has become increasingly synonymous with overspending, corruption, and autocratic regimes—are worth having at all.
Fans of the competition argue that the Olympics are at least as important today as they were when they made their modern debut in the late 19th century. At the time, Pierre de Coubertin, the French historian and founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Olympics’ governing body, billed the competition as a “peace movement” that would bring the world together through sport. In the run-up to Tokyo, Olympic organizers stressed that these Games would be “a beacon of hope” and unity during a time of unprecedented suffering and isolation.
And, in some ways, they have been. Despite their somber opening ceremony and the absence of spectators, this year’s Olympics delivered on the pomp, pageantry, and athleticism that we’ve come to expect from the world’s largest sporting festival, including such notable moments as Italy and Qatar’s shared gold-medal finish in the men’s high-jump competition and the American gymnast Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from the competition, highlighting the importance of athletes’ mental well-being. But behind the veneer of pageantry and nationalism lie more troubling trends—ones that close observers of the Olympics describe as endemic issues the IOC has so far proved unable, or unwilling, to address.
The first problem is the sheer cost of the Games. While hosting an Olympics is regarded by many cities as one of the world’s greatest honors, it’s also one of the most expensive. With few exceptions, the Olympics have been a money-losing endeavor for their hosts—one that starts with cities paying tens of millions of dollars just to submit a bid and ends with them spending several times more than their budget. (Tokyo’s Games, for example, were initially expected to cost $7.3 billion; they’re now projected to total closer to $28 billion). As a result, many host cities are saddled with years of debt, not to mention the burden of maintaining abandoned stadiums and other white-elephant facilities that quickly fall into disrepair.
“Hosting the Olympics is an incredible boondoggle,” Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, a historian and the author of Dropping the Torch, a book about the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics, told me. “It’s a great way to lose money.” (An IOC spokesperson disputed this characterization, citing a study which concluded that the cost of the Olympic Games from 2000 to 2018 were covered by revenue. This report, however, focuses on the profitability of Games from the perspective of the Olympic Committees rather than the host cities. It also excludes capital costs such as transportation upgrades on the grounds that “they are not needed to stage the Games.”)
Read: 3 reasons why hosting the Olympics is a loser’s game
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/3-reasons-why-hosting-the-olympics-is-a-losers-game/260111/
The bleak economic prospects explain why interest in hosting the Games has waned in recent years. Numerous referenda have shown that when populations are given a say in whether their city should take on an Olympics, the answer is almost always an emphatic no. But the economic challenge of hosting the games also explains another recurring issue: the weaponization of the Olympics by repressive states. After all, unlike democracies, authoritarian regimes don’t need to worry about referenda. And although the cost of running an Olympics is high, the Games grant their host country the ability to showcase its might and launder its reputation on the world stage.
Although the IOC has attracted criticism for its record of partnering with authoritarian regimes, that hasn’t been enough to compel the governing body to change tack. Part of the reason is that, in some instances, authoritarian states have been the only bidders left standing. Such was the case in the bid for the 2022 Winter Games, after Oslo, the favorite, withdrew over cost issues, leaving just two contenders: Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Summer Games, and Almaty, in Kazakhstan. Beijing won.
But perhaps the primary reason the IOC hasn’t excluded autocracies from the Games is because it’s simply not in the committee’s interest to do so. According to a 2017 report by Thomas Könecke and Michiel de Nooij, “keeping good working relations with authoritarian governments helps the IOC to secure the future of its main revenue driver, the Olympic Games, thus providing for its own future.” Put simply, partnering with autocracies pays. “Given the diverse participation in the Olympic Games, the IOC must remain neutral on all global political issues,” an IOC spokesperson told The Atlantic, adding that the choice of host “does not mean that the IOC takes a position with regard to the political structure, social circumstances, or human rights standard in [the] country.”
Critics of the Olympics have put forth a number of recommendations for reform, including giving the Games a permanent home in Greece, thereby honoring their ancient roots while also bringing an end to the bidding wars and overspending that have overshadowed their purpose of bringing the world together. But such reforms have largely been ignored by the IOC, which opted instead to put forward its own set of recommendations, including encouraging host cities to rely on existing or temporary sporting facilities and launching an Olympic TV channel.
Read: What if the Olympics were always held in the same city?
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/rio-olympics-permanent-host/494264/
“To say they are not willing to make significant changes to their business model is to make one of the most egregious understatements that I can conjure on this topic,” Jules Boykoff, an international expert in sports politics and the author of multiple books on the Olympics, told me. Having spent time in London, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo in the run-up to the 2012, 2016, and 2020 Games, respectively, Boykoff noted that many of the issues seen in the Olympics—including internal displacement, corruption, and greenwashing—travel with the Games. “They’re not Tokyo problems; they’re not Rio problems; they’re not London problems,” he said. “They are problems that are essentially imported into each Olympic host city when the political and economic elites of that city decide to put forth a bid.”
hey are an Olympics problem, but they are also, fundamentally, an IOC problem. After all, the governing body consists of 102 members, comprising former Olympians, presidents of international sporting federations, and even royalty. It selects its own members, and makes no requirement that every country be represented. Indeed, most aren’t. Despite claiming “supreme authority” over the world’s largest sporting festival, it lacks external accountability.
The IOC “is completely undemocratic; it’s completely nontransparent,” David Goldblatt, the author of The Games: A Global History of the Olympics, told me. “It doesn’t appoint critics; it doesn’t listen to its critics; it doesn’t engage with its critics. And yet, it has a privileged position in the global governance of sport.”
Although the IOC is unlikely to heed its critics’ calls to reform the Olympics, or to cancel them altogether, it has proved its ability to change course—when it’s left with no other choice. The shortage of willing host cities has already prompted the IOC to overhaul its bidding process, swapping its costly bidding wars for an internal (and arguably less transparent) selection process instead. Climate change, and the impact it could have on the viability of future host cities, could also escalate the pressure to alter the way the Olympics are conducted. After Beijing (which is already ill-suited to host a Winter Games, relying entirely on artificial snow), the Olympics will then head to Paris, to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy, to Los Angeles, and to Brisbane, all of which are grappling with rising temperatures and extreme weather events including drought, wildfires, and flooding.
But the Olympics might be running out of time for reform. After Tokyo, “the varnish [of the Games] has been stripped off,” Boykoff said. “If you can’t do something now, especially with another very controversial Olympic Games coming up, in Beijing, well sheesh, when are you going to be able to do it?”
Yasmeen Serhan is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/08/ending-the-olympics-tokyo/619666/
How to watch Team USA athletes in last day action at Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the coming hours, including men’s marathon
8 AUG 2021
Team USA continue their medal hunt on the final day of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, Sunday 8 August (and late Saturday in the U.S.).
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/en/news/watch-team-usa-athletes-last-day-action-tokyo-2020-olympics
The best photos from the Tokyo Olympics
Updated 11:49 AM ET, Sat August 7, 2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/23/sport/gallery/tokyo-summer-olympics-best-photos/index.html
It's the final week of the Tokyo Olympics, and these Games have been filled with amazing performances and some unexpected results.
On Saturday, Allyson Felix surpassed Carl Lewis to become the most decorated American in track-and-field history when she won gold in the 4x400-meter relay. The US men's basketball team won gold for the fourth Olympics in a row, defeating France 87-82. And Japan's baseball team finished an undefeated tournament by beating the United States 2-0 in the gold-medal game.
In other action this week, Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah became the first-ever woman to win the 100 and 200 meters at consecutive Olympics. And world records were shattered in both the men's and women's 400-meter hurdles, with Norway's Karsten Warholm and the United States' Sydney McLaughlin winning gold.
American swimmer Caeleb Dressel has won the most gold medals in these Olympics (five), and Australian swimmer Emma McKeon has won the most medals in all (seven). Only one other woman in history, Soviet gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya, has won seven medals at a single Olympics.
Simone Biles and her struggles with "the twisties" dominated the headlines in gymnastics, but she bounced back to win a bronze on the balance beam. And when she couldn't defend her individual all-around title, teammate Suni Lee stepped up and became the fifth straight American to win the event.
UPDATED Aug. 7 -- Best photos of the Tokyo Olympics
Washington Post Staff · Photography · Aug 7, 2021
Athletes compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/best-photos-of-tokyo-olympics/
Tokyo feared Games would spread COVID; numbers suggest that didn't happen
Tim KellyAntoni Slodkowski
August 7, 2021
6:12 AM CDT
Last Updated 10 hours ago
TOKYO, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Before the Olympics began, Japan had feared that the 2020 Games, with thousands of officials, media and athletes descending on Tokyo in the middle of a pandemic, might spread COVID-19, introduce new variants and overwhelm the medical system.
But as the Games draw near their end, the infection numbers from inside the Olympic "bubble" - a set of venues, hotels and the media centre to which those coming for the Games had been mostly confined - tell a different story.
Featuring more than 50,000 people, what amounted to possibly the largest global experiment of this kind since the pandemic began, appears to have largely worked, organisers and some scientists say, with only a sliver of those involved infected.
"Before the Olympics, I thought people would come to Japan with many variants and Tokyo would be a melting pot of viruses and some new variant would emerge in Tokyo," Kei Sato, a senior researcher at the University of Tokyo said.
The main reason for the low number of infections was a vaccination rate of more than 70% among the Olympians, organisers and the news media, daily testing, social distancing and a bar on domestic and international spectators, organisers say.
Brian McCloskey, the lead adviser on the "bubble" to Olympic organisers, said he would not point to any one specific measure that worked best.
"It comes as a package, it's the package that works most effectively and I think that will still be the message after these Games and is still the message irrespective of vaccinations," McCloskey said at a news conference on Saturday.
The organisers recorded 404 Games-related infections since July 1. They carried out close to 600,000 screening tests with the infection rate of 0.02%.
The situation inside the "bubble" stood in sharp contrast to outside, with a surge in infections fuelled by the Delta variant hitting daily records and for the first time crossing 5,000 in the host city, threatening to overwhelm Tokyo's hospitals. read more
MASKS AND WARNINGS
In the bubble, reporters, during their two-week quarantine, had to report their temperature and condition daily and download a contact-tracing app. They were banned from public transport and masks at the media centre were required at all times.
There were no serious cases of COVID-19 in the Olympic village, said McCloskey, where more than 10,000 athletes stayed during the Games, sometimes two to a room.
While McCloskey said that more research needed to be done, he said that at present the experts' "belief" was that the infections among overseas visitors in the bubble were brought into the country, rather than occurring locally.
McCloskey echoed the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in saying that he did not think the Games contributed to the spike in infections in Tokyo.
He said that, "the closer anyone was to the athletes and to the interface between the international community and the domestic Japanese community the more they were tested".
"And it is that protection of the link between that interface, between the international and domestic, that gives us the confidence to say that there wasn't spread between the two," said McCloskey.
Some experts, such as Koji Wada, professor of public health at the International University of Health and Welfare in Tokyo, have said it was too early to draw conclusions on the direct impact of the Games on the spread of the virus in the city.
But Wada and others have said the Games have undermined public messaging, with authorities calling on people to stay home to avoid contact with others, while athletes screamed, hugged and patted each other on the backs during competitions.
Health data collected during the two weeks of the Games, including inside the athletes village, would be analysed and published so countries could use it to help plan their responses to the coronavirus, McCloskey said.
Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Michael Perry and Himani Sarkar
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/tokyo-has-shown-pandemic-can-be-beaten-games-health-adviser-says-2021-08-07/
The Perseverance Games: Surreal Olympics approach their end
By JENNA FRYER. today
1 of 8
FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2021, file photo, Paul Chelimo, of United States, lies on the track after the final of the men's 5,000-meters at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek, File)
TOKYO (AP) — The cauldron will be snuffed Sunday on the exhausting, enlightening, sometimes enraging 2020 Tokyo Olympics — held, actually, in 2021. These are the Games that were to be tolerated, not celebrated.
They will be both.
Imperfect but not impossible, these Olympics — willed into existence despite a pandemic that sparked worldwide skepticism and hard-wired opposition from Japan’s own citizens — just might go down as the Games that changed sports for good.
These became the Olympics where the athletes had their say. The Olympics where mental health became as important as physical. The Olympics where tales of perseverance — spoken, documented and discussed loudly and at length — often overshadowed actual performance.
It wasn’t only those who stood on the medals stand at the hyper-scrutinized pressure cooker in Tokyo, where spit tests for COVID-19 and sleeping on cardboard-framed beds were part of the daily routine. It was all of them.
Their voices were heard, in big ways and small, through hundreds of reminders that their mental and physical health were not for sale, not even to the $15.5 billion behemoth that underwrites many of their grandest dreams.
Those voices were notably reflected in the words of Simone Biles, who, early on, reset the conversation when she pulled out of the gymnastics meet, declaring her well-being was more important than medals.
“It was something that was so out of my control. At end of the day, my mental and physical health is better than any medal,” said Biles, who benched herself while battling “the twisties.”
And by Naomi Osaka, the tennis player who lit the cauldron on Day 1, but only after spending the summer insisting that the world listen to her — really listen — instead of only watching her on the court. The planet’s highest-paid female athlete and the host country’s poster girl, she faced expectations that were hard to handle.
“I definitely feel like there was a lot of pressure for this,” said Osaka.
Hundreds of athletes found some way to use their voices in ways they hadn’t considered until the Tokyo Games — and the seismic 18 months that led up to it — all but commanded it.
They learned to talk about what it felt like to make sacrifices and accommodations for four years, then five, to come to the Games without friends and family, to put themselves out there, and to know they will be judged not on who they are but on how fast they run, how well they shoot, or whether they stick the landing.
“I’ve been afraid that my worth is tied to whether or not I win or lose,” Allyson Felix wrote the morning before her bronze-medal run in the 400 meters made her the most decorated female track athlete in Olympic history. “But right now I’ve decided to leave that fear behind. To understand that I am enough.”
They came in all shapes and sizes. A transgender weightlifter, a nonbinary skateboarder, and Quinn, the first openly transgender Olympian to win a gold medal. Teenage skateboarders, and surfers seeking gnarly waves — most of whom never dreamed of being on the Olympic stage, hugging and sharing tips and reminding us all that this is supposed to be fun.
Olympic Medal Count
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/results/all-sports/medal-standings.htm
They wove tales about sportsmanship: the high jumpers headed for a tension-filled tiebreaker for first, who stepped back and told a track official they should both win a gold.
And about advocacy: soccer players looking at a midday gold-medal game in the searing heat of the Olympic Stadium and deciding they deserved better. The world’s top tennis players demanding their matches be rescheduled, a request that went unheeded until Paula Badosa left the court in a wheelchair with heatstroke and Daniil Medvedev told the chair umpire, “I can finish the match but I can die. If I die, are you going to be responsible?”
And about mental health: During a teary post-race interview, sprinter Noah Lyles conceded he came as much to run as to spread the gospel that became the slogan of these fraught Games held during fraught times: It’s OK not to be OK.
And about gender equity and inclusion: The International Olympic Committee added five new sports and 18 new events for Tokyo to create an equal number of women and men for every sport, excluding baseball and softball. But when Britain’s first female Black swimmer was denied use of a cap that fit her voluminous afro, the conversation on a lack of diversity in the pool became louder.
“I just want people to know that no matter your race or background, if you don’t know how to swim, get in and learn to swim,” Alice Dearing, co-founder of the Black Swimming Association, said after the women’s open water marathon. “Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not for you.”
IOC president Thomas Bach said two days before the close that the Tokyo Games “far exceeded my personal expectations,” because when spectators were barred as a pandemic precaution he feared “these Olympic Games could become an Olympic Games without soul.”
Instead, Bach said, he found the intimacy in the empty venues made for an intense atmosphere. “In many cases you did not realize that there were no spectators,” he said. “Maybe in some cases you could even experience the feelings of the athletes closer and better than being surrounded by so many spectators.”
It is Bach’s job to call the Olympics a success. Maybe, though, that goal was met in Tokyo just by reaching the finish line. But of course there were highlights along the way.
— Italy shockingly establishing itself as a sprint power with a surprise win by Marcell Jacobs in the men’s 100 meters followed by “four Ferraris” teaming to win the 4X100 relay for another gold medal.
— Lydia Jacoby, the first swimmer from Alaska in the Olympics won gold, and Caeleb Dressel collecting five golds in the pool.
— Sunisa Lee, the first Hmong American Olympian, winning gold in the women’s all-around. And in these games where social media use soared and TikTok became the platform of choice for the Olympians, Lee blaming her bronze on the uneven bars from the distractions created by her new Internet fame.
— Streaming use surging among viewers, and NBC reporting that 3 billion minutes of content watched on its platforms were digital.
“I think the whole world will be quite happy that this event is going on in sports, in the times that we’re living in right now,” said Alexander Zverev after winning gold in men’s singles tennis for Germany in front of countryman Bach.
Though there were intermittent protests — a group of 10 or so outside the tennis final, loud enough that the players could hear and another small crowd outside Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony and before track and field events — the Japanese did have reason to celebrate. The host nation set a goal to win 30 medals in Tokyo and nearly doubled that number with 56 as of Saturday night.
Outside the Olympic bubble, COVID-19 cases soared in Tokyo to daily record highs, although Bach exonerated the Olympics because 11,000 athletes were placed away from the population and regular testing for everyone else produced extremely low rates of positives.
The pandemic still rages, and the Beijing Winter Games are set to open a mere six months from now. And COVID-19 is just one of the issues facing the next scheduled Olympics — the IOC has rejected several recent demands to move the Games from China over allegations of human rights violations.
“Our responsibility is to deliver the Games,” said IOC spokesman Mark Adams. “It is the responsibility of others — the United Nations, who have been very supportive of the Olympic Games, and governments to deal with this — and not for us. The IOC has to remain neutral.”
The IOC did get involved when Belarus attempted to return sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to her country after she criticized coaches on social media. It helped intervene as she instead went to Poland with a humanitarian visa. Then it booted two Belarus coaches from the Olympics, their credentials revoked for their role in the Tsimanouskaya saga.
The Games, of course, will go on. They always do. Japan will hand the Summer Olympics flag to France on Sunday for the 2024 Paris Games. Tokyo organizers will end with a “Worlds We Share”-themed ceremony designed to make athletes and viewers “think about what the future holds” and “expresses the idea that each of us inhabits their own world.”
The athletes did that already in Tokyo, where the Olympics will be forever remembered as the Games that persevered.
___https://apnews.com/article/2020-tokyo-olympics-the-perseverance-games-a462218ce30a212cf08fb01245e1217b
It was a good ride! Don Juan what's-his-face is a classy horse!
American gold bonanza as Tokyo Olympics near end
By JIM VERTUNO, today
TOKYO (AP) — The second to last day of competition at the Tokyo Olympics produced a gold medal bonanza for the United States.
The Americans kept up their domination in men’s basketball and women’s water polo with gold medal victories in both on Saturday, and Allyson Felix won her 11th career medal with a gold one as part of the U.S. women’s winning 4x400-relay team.
And the American men finally delivered a sprint gold medal in the 4x400-relay, the final track race of the Tokyo Games.
Kevin Durant scored 29 points and joined Carmelo Anthony as the only three-time men’s gold medalists in Olympic history as the U.S. held off France 87-82 to win the gold medal for the 16th time in 19 tries.
The Americans had started their tournament with a loss to France, then ran off five consecutive victories.
“Everybody was questioning us,” U.S. forward Draymond Green. “This is special.”
It certainly was for Durant, who carried the team through so many victories, and coach Gregg Popovich, who adds the gold medal to five NBA championships he’s won with the San Antonio Spurs.
“This one feels good because we went through a lot. We had a lot of first-time guys on the team, new experience for everyone on the team, COVID, the kind of bubble we were in, no fans, no one expecting us to lose,” Durant said.
Popovich called coaching in the Olympics “the most responsibility I’ve ever felt.”
“You’re playing for so many people that are watching, and for a country, and other countries involved. The responsibility was awesome,” Popovich said.
The gold medal wasn’t secure until Durant made two free throws with 8.8 seconds left.
“I think when we look back at the competition we’ll be proud of ourselves,” said France’s Even Fournier. “We weren’t far off ... We’re getting better.”
Felix became the most-decorated woman in Olympic track history when she won bronze in the 400 Friday night. She passed Carl Lewis for the most track medals of any U.S. athlete. Of her 11 medals, seven are gold.
Paavo Nurmi of Finland holds the all-time mark in track with 12 medals from 1920-28.
The team of Felix, Sydney McLaughlin, Dalilah Muhammad and Athing Mu was never in jeopardy in this one. Poland finished second, 3.68 seconds behind, and Jamaica finished third.
“Allyson is an amazing athlete. I’m astonished by everything she does, even coming out here at her last Games,” Mu said. “It’s just great to be with her, kind of starting my career off. That’s really nice.”
The American men’s relay team of Michael Cherry, Michael Norman, Bryce Deadmon and Rai Benjamin won the fifth gold for the U.S. men in the 4x400 since 1996.
BASEBALL
A Japanese team of All-Stars fulfilled a determined national mission to win the Olympic baseball gold medal for the first time, beating the United States 2-0 behind Munetaka Murakami’s third-inning home run.
Masato Morishita and four relievers combined on a six-hitter, and the Japanese men matched the accomplishment of the women’s softball team, which upended the Americans for their second straight gold medal.
SOCCER
Malcom scored in the 108th minute and Brazil won its second consecutive gold medal in men’s soccer with a 2-1 victory over Spain. Brazil also won gold on home soil five years ago.
Brazil had a 1-0 lead at the half, but Mikel Oyarzabal tied it for Spain in the 61st minute off a cross from Carlos Soler.
Gil Bryan nearly scored in the 88th for Spain, but his shot hit the crossbar and the match went to extra time.
Spain won the gold medal in 1992 and was also seeking its second Olympic title.
DIVING HISTORY
China finished off the single greatest diving performance in Olympic history when Cao Yuan outdueled teammate Yang Jian to win the men’s 10-meter platform title, giving the Chinese gold medals in seven of eight events at the Tokyo Games.
China’s 12 diving medals tied the record for most won in the sport at a single Olympics. The U.S. also won 12 at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, when the Americans swept all four events and nine of the 28 divers were from the host country.
The only event the Chinese didn’t win in Tokyo was men’s platform synchro, where they finished second.
IN THE WATER
Ashleigh Johnson made 11 saves, Maddie Mussleman scored three times and the United States women routed Spain 14-5 in the water polo final. The U.S. won its third consecutive gold medal.
"FULL MEDAL COUNT" shown has no graphic and shows only the top 4
INSERT:
complete Olympic Medal Count
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/results/all-sports/medal-standings.htm
The U.S. joins the men’s teams from Britain (1908-1920) and Hungary (2000-2008) as the only countries to win at least three straight water polo titles at the Olympics.
ON THE WATER
In sprint canoe, Ronald Rauhe became the first man to win a medal in canoe sprint in five Olympics when Germany won the men’s kayak four 500 meters in the final race at the Sea Forest Waterway.
Lisa Carrington of New Zealand had already won three gold medals but missed out on a fourth when the Kiwis finished fourth in the women’s kayak four 500. Hungary won the race.
Serghei Tarnovschi of Moldova returned to the Olympics to win a bronze medal in the men’s canoe 1,000 after being stripped of his 2016 bronze medal for a positive doping test.
GOING THE DISTANCE
Sifan Hassan won the 10,000 meters for her second gold and third medal of the Tokyo Olympics after entering three long-distance races.
It completed an astonishing 5,000 and 10,000 double for the Ethiopian-born runner, who now competes for the Netherlands. She also won a bronze in the 1,500 meters. Her victory in the 10,000 was her sixth race in eight days in Tokyo.
Peres Jepchirchir led a 1-2 Kenyan finish in the women’s marathon. She withstood the heat and humidity while running through the streets of Sapporo more than 500 miles north of Tokyo, winning in 2 hours, 27 minutes, 20 seconds. Her teammate Brigid Kosgei was second and American Molly Seidel, a relative newcomer to the marathon stage, took home the bronze.
WOMEN’S GOLF
Nelly Korda gave the U.S. a sweep of gold medals in golf, holding on for a one-shot victory. Korda led by as many as three shots on the back nine. In the end, she needed two putts from just inside 30 feet on the 18th hole for par and a 2-under 69.
https://apnews.com/article/2020-tokyo-olympics-roundup-802fbe0c2dd00d60dd9ce2ba0a01518d
German pentathlon coach disqualified after punching horse in competition
https://www.yahoo.com/sports/german-pentathlon-coach-disqualified-after-punching-horse-in-competition-tokyo-olympics-083624403.html
And that should not be the end of it.
Our Best Olympics Photos
The stands may have been almost empty at the Tokyo Games, but these performances deserve to be seen. Here is what the Summer Olympics looked like from up close.
Aug. 6, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/sports/olympics/olympics-highlights-photos.html
Brazil beats Spain in extra time to repeat as the Olympic men’s soccer champion.
Brazil won its second straight men’s soccer gold on Saturday.Credit...Emily Rhyne/The New York Times
It took Brazil 64 years to win its first Olympic gold medal in soccer. Five years later, it has its second.
Playing in the same stadium in Yokohama where its national team won the 2002 World Cup final, Brazil repeated as Olympic champion on Saturday by beating Spain, 2-1, in extra time.
Malcom, a 24-year-old forward who plays for the Russian club Zenit St. Petersburg, delivered the winner as a fresh-legged substitute, scoring off a long lead pass in the 108th minute.
The Olympic men’s tournament is an under-23 championship, an accommodation with FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, to maintain the primacy of the World Cup as the sport’s showcase event. But it remains an important barometer of a country’s ability to produce young talent.
Men’s Soccer Gold Medal ›
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South Korea
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6
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Matheus Cunha had given Brazil the lead in first-half injury time. After controlling a ball between two Spanish defenders in the penalty area, he inexplicably found himself alone only yards in front of goalkeeper Unai Simón and slotted home a low shot.
Spain answered in the 61st minute off a crisp finish at the back post by Mikel Oyarzabal, one of a handful of young players called in to the Olympic squad only weeks after helping Spain’s senior team reach the semifinals of the European Championship.
Oyarzabal’s goal extended their long, hot summer to extra time, where Malcom and Brazil had the last word. By then, Spain’s best players may have simply run their race: Pedri, the team’s wondrously talented 18-year-old midfielder, was playing his 71st match for club and country since the start of last year’s La Liga campaign, a staggering workload that had brought complaints from his club coach, Ronald Koeman of Barcelona.
“It’s too much,” Koeman said. Yet go he did, despite playing a grueling, compressed league schedule and then all but one minute of Spain’s run to the European Championship semifinals.
Image
Pedri’s season, which began with Barcelona and included a trip to the Euros with Spain’s senior team, ended with a silver medal.
Pedri’s season, which began with Barcelona and included a trip to the Euros with Spain’s senior team, ended with a silver medal.Credit...Thomas Peter/Reuters
The medal was Brazil’s seventh in the Olympic tournament, and came five years after a team led by Neymar won the country’s first gold on home soil in Rio de Janeiro.
Its victory also came on familiar ground: Brazil had defeated Germany at Yokohama International Stadium 19 years earlier, in the final of the 2002 World Cup. Ronaldo scored twice that day for Brazil.
Four years later, Brazil introduced Dani Alves, a young defender who would go on to become one of the most decorated players in soccer history. Alves’s glittering career includes league championships in Spain, Italy and France and three Champions League titles with Barcelona.
On Saturday, he added an honor that he had been missing: an Olympic gold medal.
— Andrew Das
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?name=styln-olympics®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false#brazil-spain-soccer-gold-medal
An I.O.C. expert says the Games showed how to ‘keep the pandemic at bay.’
On the eve of the Olympic closing ceremony, Tokyo 2020 organizers claimed victory against a virus that delayed and almost derailed the Games, calling their measures a model for other major international events.
Brian McCloskey, a leading health adviser to the Games, said that Tokyo’s expansive testing regimen for athletes and others, combined with mask wearing and social distancing, kept the Games “safe and secure” and prevented transmission of the coronavirus between international arrivals and the Japanese public.
“By following basic public health measures and by layering on top of that the testing program, we have shown that it is possible to keep the pandemic at bay,” McCloskey, the chairman of the Tokyo 2020 Independent Expert Panel, said at a news conference on Saturday. “And that is a very important lesson from Tokyo to the rest of the world.”
Olympic organizers on Saturday reported 22 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections in the Olympic bubble to slightly more than 400. McCloskey said that organizers had tested more than 600,000 people.
No athletes were among the new cases, reflecting organizers’ relative success in walling off competitors from the outbreak raging in the rest of Japan, which on Friday reached a milestone of one million coronavirus cases.
At least 409 people connected to the Games have tested positive since July 1, including 32 athletes, according to organizers. Most of the infections have occurred among Japanese nationals, including contractors and others working at Olympic venues.
McCloskey said that organizers were in talks with national teams and Japanese officials to develop a system for testing athletes and personnel after the Games concluded to monitor potential infections in the coming weeks.
The pandemic caused the Games to be postponed from last year. Weeks before the opening ceremony, an outbreak fueled by the highly infectious Delta variant prompted emergency restrictions in Tokyo and other parts of Japan. The measures have done little to slow the spread of the virus, as Tokyo and Japan both had record numbers of daily cases in recent days and officials warned that the outbreak was severely straining the health system.
Some experts say that the Games, despite their near-total lack of spectators, have contributed to a feeling of pandemic fatigue in Japan and encouraged people to let down their guard, allowing the virus to spread. McCloskey disputed that idea, saying there was no evidence of a link “between the Games and the way in which the Japanese people are or are not behaving.”
— Shashank Bengal
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?
Brazil beats Spain in extra time to repeat as the Olympic men’s soccer champion.
It took Brazil 64 years to win its first Olympic gold medal in soccer. Five years later, it has its second.
Playing in the same stadium in Yokohama where its national team won the 2002 World Cup final, Brazil repeated as Olympic champion on Saturday by beating Spain, 2-1, in extra time.
Malcom, a 24-year-old forward who plays for the Russian club Zenit St. Petersburg, delivered the winner as a fresh-legged substitute, scoring off a long lead pass in the 108th minute.
The Olympic men’s tournament is an under-23 championship, an accommodation with FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, to maintain the primacy of the World Cup as the sport’s showcase event. But it remains an important barometer of a country’s ability to produce young talent.
Men’s Soccer Gold Medal ›
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South Korea
3
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Mexico
6
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Brazil
1
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0
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0
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0
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5
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2
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0
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0
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Matheus Cunha had given Brazil the lead in first-half injury time. After controlling a ball between two Spanish defenders in the penalty area, he inexplicably found himself alone only yards in front of goalkeeper Unai Simón and slotted home a low shot.
Spain answered in the 61st minute off a crisp finish at the back post by Mikel Oyarzabal, one of a handful of young players called in to the Olympic squad only weeks after helping Spain’s senior team reach the semifinals of the European Championship.
Oyarzabal’s goal extended their long, hot summer to extra time, where Malcom and Brazil had the last word. By then, Spain’s best players may have simply run their race: Pedri, the team’s wondrously talented 18-year-old midfielder, was playing his 71st match for club and country since the start of last year’s La Liga campaign, a staggering workload that had brought complaints from his club coach, Ronald Koeman of Barcelona.
“It’s too much,” Koeman said. Yet go he did, despite playing a grueling, compressed league schedule and then all but one minute of Spain’s run to the European Championship semifinals.
Image
Pedri’s season, which began with Barcelona and included a trip to the Euros with Spain’s senior team, ended with a silver medal.
Pedri’s season, which began with Barcelona and included a trip to the Euros with Spain’s senior team, ended with a silver medal.Credit...Thomas Peter/Reuters
The medal was Brazil’s seventh in the Olympic tournament, and came five years after a team led by Neymar won the country’s first gold on home soil in Rio de Janeiro.
Its victory also came on familiar ground: Brazil had defeated Germany at Yokohama International Stadium 19 years earlier, in the final of the 2002 World Cup. Ronaldo scored twice that day for Brazil.
Four years later, Brazil introduced Dani Alves, a young defender who would go on to become one of the most decorated players in soccer history. Alves’s glittering career includes league championships in Spain, Italy and France and three Champions League titles with Barcelona.
On Saturday, he added an honor that he had been missing: an Olympic gold medal.
— Andrew Das
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?name=styln-olympics®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false#allyson-felix-olympic-medal-record
Men’s 4x400 relay
The American men followed suit by winning their 4x400-meter race.
The performance came two days after the Americans failed to make the final of the 4x100 relay race thanks to a flubbed baton pass. A loss in the 4x400 would have been a one-two punch of disappointment, given the unmatched depth that the United States has long had in sprinting.
The Americans were the defending champions in the event and had won it at eight of the last 10 Olympic Games. Saturday night’s win made that nine out of 11.
The U.S. team included two of the top five finishers in the individual 400-meter race, Michael Cherry and Michael Norman, and the second-place finisher in the 400-meter hurdles, Rai Benjamin.
Norman put the Americans in the lead on the second leg. Bryce Deadmon stretched it to five meters, and Benjamin carried it home for a 1.48-second win over the Netherlands. Botswana took the bronze.
— Scott Cacciola and Matt Futterman
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?name=styln-olympics®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false#allyson-felix-olympic-medal-record
Allyson Felix wins her 11th Olympic medal, surpassing Carl Lewis’s American record.
TOKYO — Allyson Felix has won her 11th Olympic medal, making her the most decorated American Olympian in track and field, surpassing the 10 medals won by Carl Lewis.
Track and Field: Women’s 4×400m Relay ›
GOLD
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United States
SILVER
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Poland
BRONZE
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Jamaica
A stacked team of Sydney McLaughlin, Felix, Dalilah Muhammad and Athing Mu won the gold medal on Saturday night in the 4x400-meter relay, continuing an American winning streak in the event that has been unbroken since 1996.
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Felix handing off to Dalilah Muhammad after running the second leg of the relay.
Felix handing off to Dalilah Muhammad after running the second leg of the relay.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
The American team was full of luminaries, present and future. McLaughlin, who turned 22 on Saturday, and Muhammad, 31, joined forces after going head-to-head this week in the final of the 400-meter hurdles, a classic race in which McLaughlin edged Muhammad at the line to break her own world record. Mu, a 19-year-old phenomenon from New Jersey, had won the 800 meters with a dominant performance days before.
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Felix with Muhammad, left, Athing Mu and McLaughlin after their victory.
Felix with Muhammad, left, Athing Mu and McLaughlin after their victory.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
And there was Felix, of course, the grande dame of United States track and field, just one day removed from winning the bronze in the 400 meters. Felix, 35, has said that these will be her final Olympics, and she ensured that they were memorable.
Image
The United States has won gold in the women’s 4x400 in every Olympics since 1996.
The United States has won gold in the women’s 4x400 in every Olympics since 1996.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Track and Field: Women’s 4×400m Relay Final ›
TIME
GOLD
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United States
3:16.85
SILVER
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Poland
3:20.53
BRONZE
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Jamaica
3:21.24
4
CAN flag
Canada
3:21.84
5
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Britain
3:22.59
6
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Netherlands
3:23.74
7
BEL flag
Belgium
3:23.96
8
CUB flag
Cuba
3:26.92
The U.S. men’s basketball team wins its fourth straight Olympic gold.
SAITAMA, Japan — It was not always pretty, but in the end, the United States men’s basketball team ascended to the heights they were always expected to reach. Overcoming a slow start to the Olympic tournament, the Americans dispatched France, 87-82, with relative comfort in the final game on Saturday morning at Saitama Super Arena to win their 16th gold medal in the event.
In front of a sizable crowd — not of fans, but of national team staff, Olympic volunteers and journalists — the United States looked far more cohesive and confident than when they lost to France in the opening game of competition.
Basketball: Men’s Gold Medal Game
Final
T
USA flag
United States
22 22 27 16 87
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France
18 21 24 19 82
That contest had exposed some of their early issues as a team — namely, a lack of familiarity as a group. But they had none of those problems on Saturday morning.
Kevin Durant, once again, was the focal point and main driving force of the team, scoring 29 points to go with six rebounds. Jayson Tatum contributed a strong performance of his own, finishing with 19 points.
The Americans built an 8-point lead heading into the final quarter and withstood a number of runs from the French to close the game. France cut the lead to 85-82 with 10.2 seconds remaining, giving them a glimmer of hope. But Kevin Durant sank two free throws to effectively seal the result.
Rudy Gobert finished with 16 points and eight rebounds for France before fouling out in the finals seconds of the game.
— Andrew Keh
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?name=styln-olympics®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false#us-mens-basketball-wins-gold
I have to admit I was truly impressed by her performance throughout the equestrian events. A remarkable performance under pressure to win a silver.
Jessica Springsteen wins a silver medal with the U.S. show jumping team.
Jessica Springsteen riding Don Juan van de Donkhoeve in the show jumping team final at Equestrian Park in Tokyo.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
TOKYO — For all the accolades he has won over the years, an Olympic medal has always eluded Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps that’s because rocking out still isn’t an Olympic event.
But another Springsteen has now accomplished the feat, after Jessica Springsteen, Bruce’s daughter, and the rest of the U.S. equestrian show jumping team won the silver medal on Saturday night.
Equestrian: Team Jumping ›
GOLD
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Sweden
SILVER
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United States
BRONZE
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Laura Kraut went first for the United States and had a clear ride with no faults. Springsteen was next, and had four faults after her horse, Don Juan van de Donkhoeve, knocked down a rail. The anchorman, McLain Ward, had four faults as well.
The team’s total of eight faults was good for a tie for first with Sweden, which also had eight faults. That meant there would be a jump-off for gold.
Each team sent its three riders over an abbreviated course. All six jumped it without a fault, but Sweden’s total time was faster by 1.3 seconds.
“I was disappointed to have the four faults,” Springsteen said before the jump-off. “But I thought my horse jumped the rest of the course absolutely beautifully.”
— Victor Mather
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?
Jessica Springsteen wins a silver medal with the U.S. show jumping team.
Jessica Springsteen riding Don Juan van de Donkhoeve in the show jumping team final at Equestrian Park in Tokyo.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
TOKYO — For all the accolades he has won over the years, an Olympic medal has always eluded Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps that’s because rocking out still isn’t an Olympic event.
But another Springsteen has now accomplished the feat, after Jessica Springsteen, Bruce’s daughter, and the rest of the U.S. equestrian show jumping team won the silver medal on Saturday night.
Equestrian: Team Jumping ›
GOLD
SWE flag
Sweden
SILVER
USA flag
United States
BRONZE
BEL flag
Belgium
Laura Kraut went first for the United States and had a clear ride with no faults. Springsteen was next, and had four faults after her horse, Don Juan van de Donkhoeve, knocked down a rail. The anchorman, McLain Ward, had four faults as well.
The team’s total of eight faults was good for a tie for first with Sweden, which also had eight faults. That meant there would be a jump-off for gold.
Each team sent its three riders over an abbreviated course. All six jumped it without a fault, but Sweden’s total time was faster by 1.3 seconds.
“I was disappointed to have the four faults,” Springsteen said before the jump-off. “But I thought my horse jumped the rest of the course absolutely beautifully.”
— Victor Mather
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?
Nelly Korda of the U.S. captures the gold in women’s golf.
Nelly Korda of the United States held off a final-round challenge from Japan’s Mone Inami and New Zealand’s Lydia Ko to claim the gold medal in women’s golf at Kasumigaseki Country Club.
Her victory, six days after Xander Schauffele won the gold in men’s golf, gave the United States a sweep of the tournaments at the Tokyo Olympics.
Golf: Women’s Individual Stroke Play ›
GOLD
Nelly Korda
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United States
SILVER
Mone Inami
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Japan
BRONZE
Lydia Ko
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New Zealand
Korda, the world’s top-ranked women’s golfer, had led after the second and third rounds, and closed with a two-under-par 69.
But Inami and Ko both shot six-under 65s on Saturday, methodically slicing into the 23-year-old Korda’s advantage and taking the race for the gold to the day’s final holes.
Inami, 22, birdied the 17th hole to pull even with Korda with a hole to play, but she then bogeyed the final hole, dropping her one shot off the lead. That left Ko, 24, who was also a shot behind, as the only challenger for the gold medal, but she finished with a par that was promptly matched by Korda.
Korda, who won her first professional major at the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June, left the 18th green with a broad smile, but for Inami and Ko, the day was not over: They immediately headed for a playoff to determine who would claim the silver medal, and who would get the bronze. That second competition lasted a single hole: Inami made par and finished second when Ko recorded a bogey.
Korda’s older sister, Jessica, also played for the United States at the Tokyo Games. Jessica Korda finished in a tie for 15th, then returned to the 18th hole to embrace Nelly after her victory.
— Andrew Das
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results?name=styln-olympics®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false#nelly-korda-womens-golf-gold
USA left 9 players on base and lost 2-0. What a heartbreaker for the USA and Scioscia. Missed out on the Gold and a WS win ala Tommy Lasorda.
Japan gets its first baseball gold, a highlight for the host country in one of its top sports.
YOKOHAMA, Japan — Back after a 13-year absence from the Olympics, the baseball gold medal came down to a showdown between the two biggest baseball countries in the world: the United States and Japan.
And in a close contest on Saturday night, top-ranked Japan prevailed, 2-0, to claim an award that was curiously missing from its list of accomplishments. It was the baseball mad archipelago’s first gold medal in the six trips to the Olympics since 1992, when the sport was first officially played in the Summer Games.
Before now, Japan had come close just once — winning a silver medal in 1996 — and claiming bronze medals in 1992 and 2004.
On a humid Saturday night at Yokohama Baseball Stadium, Japan outlasted the United States on the strength of its pitching, led by Masato Morishita. The 23-year-old right-hander tossed five scoreless innings and struck out five, vexing his opponents with a low 90s fastball and an array of darting breaking balls.
The cadre of Japanese relievers that followed did much of the same.
Nick Martinez, 31, the United States’ starting pitcher, held his own. But his lone mistake loomed large: a third-inning solo home run surrendered to third baseman Munetaka Murakami. After Murakami made contact, Martinez spun around and grimaced when the ball landed in the center-field seats.
Beyond the blast, the game was a pitchers’ duel. The United States threatened in multiple innings, but Japan’s pitchers wriggled out unscathed each time.
Japan, finally, added some breathing room in the eighth inning, taking a 2-0 lead when Masataka Yoshida singled and Tetsuto Yamada scored from second base following a wild throw home from center fielder Jack Lopez. Before Yamada had sneaked his hand across home plate past a futile tag attempt, Japanese players were bouncing up and down in front of the dugout.
During the Olympics, the Japanese national baseball team was one of the host country’s most followed squads.
Although no fans were allowed inside the stadium, a sizable crowd of national team staff, Olympic volunteers and media members sat in the stands Saturday night to watch the baseball powerhouses play. And much like they had on other game days, a smattering of fans stood outside the stadium to snap photos of and welcome the Japanese players as they arrived by bus in the afternoon.
Olympic baseball is taken seriously here. The country’s top professional league, the Nippon Professional Baseball league, paused its season so that its best players could play in the Summer Games. Yokohama Stadium is home to the BayStars.
Major League Baseball, unlike its Japanese counterpart, carried on and didn’t allow players on its 40-man rosters to compete in the Olympics. Still, the United States squad — made up of unemployed veterans in their late 30s and young prospects still a few steps from reaching the big leagues — was one of the best in the Olympic tournament.
The silver medal in baseball was the first for the United States. It won the gold in 2000 and bronze in 1996 and 2008.
Saturday was the last chance for baseball players across the world to compete on the Olympic stage. Booted from the permanent Olympic program following the 2008 Games, the sport had returned to the program because of host Japan’s ardent love of the sport.
Neither baseball nor softball will return for the 2024 Games in Paris. They are, though, widely expected to return for in 2028 in Los Angeles.
Earlier in the day, the Dominican Republic defeated the 2008 gold medal winners, South Korea, 10-6, to win a bronze medal, the first baseball medal in the country’s history.
— James Wagner
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/06/sports/olympics-tokyo-medals-results#us-japan-baseball-gold
Tokyo Olympics Day 14: U.S. successful in semis
Beau Dure
Aug. 6, 2021 5:55 am ET
(Updated: Aug. 6, 2021 10:55 am ET)
In a wildly coincidental bit of scheduling, two U.S. women's teams faced Serbian teams in semifinals at the same time Friday.
Neither contest was particularly close.
The basketball result was predictable, with the USA leading by double digits most of the way as Brittney Griner and Breanna Stewart posting double-doubles. (STORY)
Volleyball was also a rout, which was a bit more surprising. Serbia was the defending silver medalist, having beaten the USA along the way, and won the world championship in 2018. The U.S. team has won medals in the three straight Olympics and won the 2021 Nations League, but Jordan Thompson's injury has made the team more vulnerable. It didn't show on Friday, with the USA breezing to a 25-19, 25-15, 25-23 win to reach the final. (STORY)
At the same time, boxer Keyshawn Davis stepped up for his lightweight semifinal bout. He had a slightly tougher time than the women's teams but still took a clear-cut win to earn a chance to fight for gold. (STORY)
Already claiming gold: the beach volleyball pair of April Ross and Alix Klineman, who made quick work of their opponents in the morning. Ross won her third career medal of a third color with a third partner. (STORY)
Also claiming gold in dramatic fashion: wrestler Gable Steveson. (STORY)
Ross/Klineman defeat Australia to win gold
BEACH VOLLEYBALL
Ross/Klineman defeat Australia to win gold
6m 54s
Play Ross/Klineman defeat Australia to win gold video
TRACK AND FIELD
Allyson Felix won her 10th and perhaps most surprising Olympic medal, taking bronze in the women's 400m. Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas defended her title. (STORY)
Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce now has eight medals, and Elaine Thompson-Herah has three gold medals in the Tokyo Olympics thanks to Jamaica's win in the 4x100m relay. The U.S. women took silver. (STORY)
But Jamaica was denied in the men's 4x100m, finishing a startling fifth while Italy continued its remarkable track and field success with the win. (STORY)
In the men's 5000, world record-holder Joshua Cheptegui took gold, while the USA's Paul Chelimo earned a medal for the second straight Olympics with a bronze. (STORY)
The Netherlands' Sifan Hassan, whose attempt to win the 1500/5000/10,000 triple was nearly derailed by a fall in the 1500m prelims a few hours before winning the 5000m, took bronze in the 1500m final. (STORY)
China's Liu Shiying needed just one throw to win the women's javelin. (STORY)
The race walkers were first up on the day, with the men embarking on their 50k amble at 5:30 a.m. Tokyo time and Poland's Dawid Tomala crossing the finish line at 9:20 a.m. for the win. The event's future is in doubt, having been dropped from the 2024 schedule. (STORY)
Italy's Antonella Palmisano won the women's 20k walk. Fellow Italian Massimo Stano won gold at the same distance earlier in the Games. (STORY)
Felix earns 10th medal, Miller-Uibo defends gold in 400m
TRACK & FIELD
Felix earns 10th medal, Miller-Uibo defends gold in 400m
57s
Play Felix earns 10th medal, Miller-Uibo defends gold in 400m video
WRESTLING
On a dramatic night on the mat, U.S. wrestlers won and lost on last-second takedowns.
Gable Steveson took gold at 125kg at the buzzer, turning a one-point deficit into a two-point win in a back-and-forth match.
Sarah Hildebrandt was less fortunate, losing a semifinal bout she controlled until the last minute.
Kyle Dake won bronze over rival Frank Chamizo in a convincing performance.
And the U.S. will get at least one more medal on Saturday, as Kyle Snyder will wrestle for gold. Hildebrandt will also have a chance to work her way toward a bout for bronze.
(ROUNDUP)
Gable Steveson literally flips out after gold medal victory
WRESTLING
Gable Steveson literally flips out after gold medal victory
1m 9s
Play Gable Steveson literally flips out after gold medal victory video
AROUND THE GAMES
Women's soccer: Canada won the gold medal in an epic game that nearly went until midnight in Japan, winning a penalty shootout marked by many misses after a 1-1 draw.
Men's soccer: Mexico beat Japan 3-1 in the bronze medal game. (STORY)
Handball: We'll have an unofficial gold medal rematch, as the ROC beat Norway in the semifinals and perennial power France overcame a tough challenge from Sweden. In 2016, Russia beat Norway, which had won the previous two Olympic finals, in the semifinals in overtime and then beat France in the final. (COVERAGE)
Water polo: Greece which has never taken a medal in men's water polo, beat Hungary, which has won nine golds, and will face defending champion Serbia. (COVERAGE)
Field hockey: The Netherlands and Argentina face off for gold. Earlier, Great Britain held off India 4-3 for bronze. (COVERAGE)
Golf: The USA's Nelly Korda cooled off a bit in Round 3 but has maintained a three-shot lead while organizers keep an eye on the weather. (STORY)
Low scores and high heat in Round 3 of women's golf event
GOLF
Low scores and high heat in Round 3 of women's golf event
7m
Play Low scores and high heat in Round 3 of women's golf event video
MEDALISTS
Beach volleyball, women's: Gold - Ross/Klineman (USA), Silver - Clancy/Artacho del Solar (AUS), Heidrich/Verge-Depre (SUI)
Boxing, men's heavyweight: Gold - Julio Cesar La Cruz (CUB), Silver - Muslim Gadzhimagomedov (ROC), Bronze - David Nyika (NZL), Bronze - Abner Teixeira (BRA)
Cycling, women's madison: Gold - Kenny/Archibald (GBR), Silver - Dideriksen/Leth (DEN), Bronze - Khatuntseva/Novolodskaya (ROC)
Cycling: men's sprint: Gold - Harrie Lavreysen (NED), Silver - Jeffrey Hoogland (NED), Bronze - Jack Carlin (GBR)
Field hockey, women's: Gold - Netherlands, Silver - Argentina, Bronze - Great Britain
Karate, men's kata: Gold - Kiyuna Ryo (JPN), Silver - Damian Quintero (ESP), Bronze - Ali Sofuoglu (TUR), Bronze - Ariel Torres (USA)
Karate, women's 61kg kumite: Gold - Jovana Prekovic (SRB), Silver - Yin Xiaoyan (CHN), Bronze - Merve Coban (TUR), Bronze - Giana Lotfy (EGY)
Karate, women's 75kg kumite: Gold - Luigi Busa (ITA), Silver - Rafael Aghayev (AZE), Bronze - Stanislav Horuna (UKR), Bronze - Gabor Harspataki (HUN)
Modern pentathlon, women's: Gold - Kate French (GBR), Silver - Laura Asadauskaite (LTU), Bronze - Sarolta Kovacs (HUN)
Soccer, women's: Gold - Canada, Silver - Sweden, Bronze - United States
Sport climbing, women's: Gold - Janja Garnbret (SLO), Silver - Miho Nonaka (JPN), Bronze - Akiyo Noguchi (JPN)
Table tennis, men's team: Gold - China, Silver - Germany, Bronze - Japan
Track and field, men's 50k walk: Gold - Dawid Tomala (POL), Silver - Jonathan Hilbert (GER), Bronze - Evan Dunfee (CAN)
Track and field, women's 20k walk: Gold - Antonella Palmisano (ITA), Silver - Sandra Arenas (COL), Bronze - Liu Hong (CHN)
Track and field, women's javelin: Gold - Liu Shiying (CHN), Silver - Maria Andrejczyk (POL), Bronze - Kelsey-Lee Barber (AUS)
Track and field, men's 5000m: Gold - Joshua Cheptegei (UGA), Silver - Mohammed Ahmed (CAN), Bronze - Paul Chelimo (USA)
Track and field, women's 400m: Gold - Shaunae Miller-Uibo (BAH), Silver - Marileidy Paulino (DOM), Bronze - Allyson Felix (USA)
Track and field, men's 1500m: Gold - Faith Kipyegon (KEN), Silver - Laura Muir (GBR), Bronze - Sifan Hissan (NED)
Track and field, women's 4x100m relay: Gold - Jamaica, Silver - United States, Bronze - Great Britain
Track and field, men's 4x100m relay: Gold - Italy, Silver - Great Britain, Bronze - Canada
Wrestling, men's 74kg freestyle: Gold - Zaurbek Sidakov (ROC), Silver - Mahamedkhabib Kadzimahamedau (BLR), Bronze - Kyle Dake (USA), Bronze - Bekzod Abdurakhmonov (UZB)
Wrestling, men's 125kg freestyle: Gold - Gable Steveson (USA), Silver - Geno Petriashvili (GEO), Bronze - Amir Zare (IRI), Bronze - Taha Akgul (TUR)
Wrestling, women's 53kg: Gold - Mukaida Mayu (JPN), Silver - Pang Qianyu (CHN), Bronze - Vanesa Kaladzinskaya (BLR), Bronze - Bolortuya Bat-Ochir (MGL)
Small countries, big things on the Olympic stage
TOKYO OLYMPICS
Small countries, big things on the Olympic stage
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RESULTS
Get all the details on:
Artistic swimming: duet, team
Baseball: overview and box scores
Basketball: men's preliminary round, women's preliminary round
Beach volleyball: men's tournament, women's tournament
Boxing: men's fly, men's feather, men's light, men's welter, men's middle, men's light heavy, men's heavy, men's super heavy, women's fly, women's feather, women's light, women's welter, women's middle
Canoe/kayak: all events
Cycling: all events
Diving: all events
Equestrian: all events
Field hockey: men’s tournament, women’s tournament
Golf: women's tournament
Handball: men's preliminary round, women's preliminary round
Karate: all events
Modern pentathlon: men's, women's
Rhythmic gymnastics: individual, group
Soccer: men’s tournament, women’s tournament
Sport climbing: all events
Table tennis: men’s team, women’s team
Track and field: all events
Volleyball: men's preliminary round, women's preliminary round
Water polo: men's preliminary round, women's preliminary round
Wrestling: all events
https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/tokyo-olympics-day-14-us-successful-semis
Two Belarus coaches are expelled from the Olympics over their treatment of a sprinter.
The Belarusian sprinter Kristina Timanovskaya was offered asylum in Poland after resisting attempts by her coaches to force her back to her home country.Credit...Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters
TOKYO — Two coaches involved in the attempt to force an Olympic athlete home to Belarus against her will have been stripped of their credentials and expelled from the Olympic Village, Games organizers said Friday.
The case of the 200-meter specialist Kristina Timanovskaya, 24, briefly turned the Tokyo Games into the center of a major diplomatic conflict when Timanovskaya sought sanctuary from the police at Narita International Airport. Timanovskaya, who is now in Poland, said she had been “kidnapped” after writing an Instagram post criticizing the Belarusian athletic federation’s preparations for the Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee had come under pressure over the slow progress of its investigation into the matter until, on Friday, the organization announced in a Twitter post that it had asked the coaches, Artur Shimak and Yuri Moisevich, to leave the Olympic Games. “They will be offered an opportunity to be heard,” the post said, noting that the investigation was continuing.
Timanovskaya complained in her video that her coaches had registered her for an event she hadn’t trained for, the 4x400-meter relay, because they had failed to conduct enough antidoping tests on other athletes.
In an interview with The New York Times this week, Timanovskaya named Moisevich, the head coach of the Belarusian national team, and Shimak, the deputy director of the Belarusian Republican Track and Field Training Center, as central players in the attempt to remove her from Tokyo.
She said the two men had come to her room at the Olympic Village to persuade her to recant the complaints she had made in her Instagram post and to go home. The order, they said, came from higher-ranking officials.
“Put aside your pride,” Moisevich can be heard saying on a partial recording Timanovskaya made of the conversation. “Your pride will tell you: ‘Don’t do it. You’ve got to be kidding.’ And it will start pulling you into the devil’s vortex and twisting you.”
He adds, “That’s how suicide cases end up, unfortunately.”
Timanovskaya can be heard crying on the tape. At other times she sounds defiant, refusing to believe that if she were to acquiesce and return home, she would be able to continue her athletic career.
The chairman of the Belarus Olympic committee is the eldest son of Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the strongman leader who has held power in the country for 27 years. He has long sought to stifle any dissent, through measures including a brutal crackdown that began a year ago after a disputed presidential election. Targets of the crackdown also included a number of athletes, leading to the I.O.C.’s decision in December to bar the Lukashenkos from attending the Tokyo Games.
— Tariq Panja
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50-kilometer racewalking strides off the Olympic stage.
Dawid Tomala of Poland, center, won the 50-kilometer race walk on Friday in Sapporo, Japan.
Dawid Tomala of Poland, center, won the 50-kilometer race walk on Friday in Sapporo, Japan.Credit...Feline Lim/Reuters
TOKYO — Only the purest of the purists revel in 50-kilometer racewalking.
All that arm swinging and hip swaying for more than three hours.
You thought the marathon was long at 26.2 miles in two-plus hours?
The 50-kilometer racewalking world-record holder, Yohann Diniz of France, raced, er, walked the course of about 31 miles in three hours 32 minutes and 33 seconds in 2014. The more common 20-kilometer race walk is a sprint by comparison.
So for the brave few aficionados hooked on the race, the 50-kilometer race on Friday morning local time was bittersweet.
It was the final version of the race at the Olympics. Yes, the 50-kilometer event is walking into the sunset and will not return for the Paris Games in 2024.
The Olympic committee has decided the race does not fit with the organization’s stated mission of gender equality. It is the only event on the Olympic program that has no approximate equivalent for women. Rather than add a women’s race, the I.O.C. will introduce an unspecified mixed-team racewalking event.
“We are working with the I.O.C. on a Race Walk Mixed Team event but there is still a considerable way to go to create a new format that will work for the sport of athletics and meet the I.O.C.’s criteria for the Olympic Games,” Loic Malroux, a spokesman for World Athletics, said in a statement.
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Massimo Stano of Italy won the men’s 20-kilometer race walk at the Tokyo Games.
Massimo Stano of Italy won the men’s 20-kilometer race walk at the Tokyo Games.Credit...Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The 50-kilometer’s demise has Elliott Denman upset. Denman, a sportswriter who was a racewalker for the U.S. team in the Melbourne Games in 1956, said in an email that he was angered by the removal of “the longest and toughest of all events.”
The race, which was introduced in 1932 at the Los Angeles Games and held every Summer Olympics since then except the Montreal Games in 1976, is apparently too slow and tedious for younger sports fans. On television, the walkers also look like they’re jogging, which doesn’t help the sport.
“Unless the situation takes a drastic U-turn somewhere down the road, and don’t get your hopes up about it — the Sapporo 50K champion will be the 20th and last in an amazing series,” Denman wrote. Racewalkers, he added, “loved every step of their long journeys” and “now, for all that effort, they’re being told to ‘go take a hike.’”
The race, like the men’s and women’s marathons, was moved from Tokyo to Sapporo, on the northern island of Hokkaido, because it’s cooler there. It began at 5:30 a.m. local time on Friday, just after sunrise.
Dawid Tomala of Poland won the gold medal in 3:50:08, nearly 18 minutes short of the Olympic record, which will now stand for eternity.
— Ken Belson
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Biting your own medal is one thing. A Japanese mayor learned you don’t bite someone else’s.
Olympic athletes have long been photographed biting their medals, a celebratory if not entirely hygienic gesture.
But typically they’re biting their own medals. A mayor in Japan learned the hard way that chomping on someone else’s doesn’t go over as well.
Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya apologized after biting the gold medal of Miu Goto, a member of the Japanese national softball team, during a ceremony on Wednesday as he stood in front of a backdrop promoting coronavirus safety precautions. He was immediately pilloried on social media, where some Olympians said they would be furious if it happened to them. Others just thought it was gross.
Toyota expressed its displeasure in a statement, saying Mr. Kawamura “did not pay respect and honor to the athlete, nor had consideration to prevention of infection.” (Goto also plays for the company’s corporate team.)
Mr. Kawamura said he later recognized it was “extremely inappropriate conduct.”
“I apologize from the bottom of my heart for making her and others feel uncomfortable and causing troubles to them,” he said.
Local news reports said Mr. Kawamura had visited Toyota to deliver a letter of apology, but he waited in the car while his aides went inside. The city of Nagoya received about 4,000 complaints from citizens criticizing his act, according to reports.
Naohisa Takato, a judo gold medalist, wrote on Twitter that he handled his medal with care so as not to damage it.
“Ms. Goto is so generous that she did not get angry,” he wrote. “If I were her, I would cry.”
Nao Kodaira, a speedskater who won gold at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, tweeted that he would have cried and “wouldn’t be able to recover for a while.”
— Daniel Victor and Hisako Ueno
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Jamaica wins the women’s 4x100-meter relay easily, while Italy stuns the men’s field
The Jamaican women put an exclamation point on their domination of Olympic sprinting Friday night, winning the women’s 4x100 relay in a race whose outcome seemed predetermined from the start.
The Jamaican team featured the three medalists in the 100 meters, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and Shericka Jackson, with Briana Williams running the leadoff leg. Thompson-Herah also won the 200 meters.
As long as the Jamaicans could take care of the baton and get it safely around the track — never a guarantee — it appeared nearly impossible for them to lose. They missed the world record by just two-tenths of a second and ran the second fastest time in history.
Jamaica’s closest competition came from the United States, the defending gold medalists in the race and always a formidable foe. But there were no holdovers from that side to the one that ran the finals in Tokyo, and the team featured just one other woman who had won a medal at these Games, Gabrielle Thomas. The Americans took the silver, finishing in 41.45.
Britain won the bronze.
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In the men’s race, Italy edged Britain by one-hundredth of a second to take the gold medal.
In the men’s race, Italy edged Britain by one-hundredth of a second to take the gold medal.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
In the men’s race, Italy stunned the field, riding the speed of 100-meter champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs to edge Britain by one-hundredth of a second to take the gold medal.
Andre De Grasse of Canada, the 200-meter champion, blazed an anchor leg and got his group to the finish line beating out China for the bronze medal. Jamaica’s men, who were unbeatable in this race for years during Usain Bolt’s career, could do no better than sixth.
This was Italy’s first triumph in the sprint relay, an event that European nations have rarely excelled at.
The United States team was not in the final because of a mistake during the baton handoff in an earlier heat and because, well, they did not run fast enough.
— Matthew Futterman
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Faith Kipyegon of Kenya wins the 1,500 meters.
Faith Kipyegon ran the race in an Olympic record time of 3:53.11.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
TOKYO — Faith Kipyegon of Kenya defended her Olympic title in the women’s 1,500 meters, and in the process ended Sifan Hassan’s audacious bid for three gold medals at the Tokyo Games.
Kipyegon, 27, ran the race in an Olympic record time of 3:53.11 after sprinting past Hassan on the final lap. Laura Muir of Britain finished second for her first medal at a major international outdoor championship, and Hassan finished with the bronze — no small consolation for an athlete who already won the 5,000 meters and has raced through hot, grinding heats since the start of the track and field competition. She will vie for another medal on Saturday in the women’s 10,000 meters.
Kipyegon, though, once again proved herself as the best in the world at her chosen distance. After winning the 1,500 meter gold at the 2016 Olympics, she gave birth to her first child in 2018. She returned to win the silver medal at the 2019 world championships, and ran the fourth fastest time in the history of the event at a meet in July: 3:51.07.
Elle Purrier St. Pierre, the Vermonter who won at the U.S. trials in June, placed 11th.
— Scott Cacciola
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April Ross and Alix Klineman of the U.S. win their first Olympic gold in beach volleyball.
April Ross, left, and Alix Klineman of the United States won the gold medal match against Australia on Friday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
TOKYO — Just four years after making the transition to beach volleyball, Alix Klineman of the United States won the gold medal on Friday with her partner April Ross, who took home her third Olympic medal.
The Americans won, 21-15, 21-16 over Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy of Australia on a blisteringly hot day at Shiokaze Park. The Australians particularly struggled to win points on their serve: An American dig, set and spike always seemed to be waiting for them.
Women’s Gold Medal Match
Final
M. Artacho del Solar / T. Clancy
AUS flag
Australia
15 16
A. Klineman / A. Ross
USA flag
United States
21 21
When Ross won her last Olympic medal with Kerri Walsh Jennings in 2016, Klineman didn’t even play beach volleyball.
She was a professional indoor volleyball player, playing internationally for teams in Italy and Brazil. In 2017, Klineman envisioned a future in beach volleyball and dreamed of the Olympics. She began to study the craft.
Ross, a two-time Olympic medalist, was watching. She saw potential with Klineman, 31, citing a list of attributes: her physicality, work ethic, intelligence and intensity, to start.
“Alix did study the game more than anyone else I’ve ever known,” said Ross, 39. “She’d go home and watch a ton of video, and I’d be like, ‘Well, I’ve got to go home and watch video, too.’”
Without fans in the stands in Tokyo, it was easier to catch the pair’s enthusiasm and communication in the stadium. If there was no cheering, they would make up for it by encouraging each other even louder on their way to the gold.
“I just can’t believe it,” Klineman said minutes after they earned their spot in the final. “It’s the most amazing feeling. You know, we dreamed of this, and this is what we worked for every single day. But just because you work for it, and just because you do everything you can, doesn’t mean that it happens.”
They had an extraordinary run at the Tokyo Olympics, winning gold without dropping a set in any of their four matches in sweltering heat. The dominance was the payoff for Klineman’s transition to a new sport and Ross’s bet on a new player.
“When you’re working for something like this, you need someone who is going to work their butt off every day,” Ross said. “And I knew she was coming out to the beach to make the Olympics. And I knew taking such a risk for herself was a motivating factor.”
“It all held up,” she said, looking up to Klineman, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall.
For Ross, the gold medal is the culmination of a career that at times was lost in the long shadow of the greatest U.S. beach volleyball players, Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor, the gold medalists in 2004, 2008 and 2012.
In her first Olympic trip, Ross won silver in 2012 with Jennifer Kessy, losing the final to the legendary duo. When May-Treanor retired, Ross joined forces with Walsh Jennings to win bronze in 2016.
Now she has the full set.
— Talya Minsberg and Victor Mather
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U.S. women’s basketball rolls past Serbia and will play in the gold medal game.
Breanna Stewart of the United States scored 12 points against Serbia.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
TOKYO — The U.S. women’s basketball team has many advantages during the Olympic tournament, including a coterie of W.N.B.A. stars that seem to have a lot of chemistry.
But one of the most important could be that several of them have played in international leagues in the off-season or do so now for lucrative contracts, making their opponents not as unfamiliar as they might otherwise be.
Brittney Griner said as much after she led the team in a 79-59 semifinal romp of Serbia that gave the U.S. squad its 54th consecutive Olympic win since 1992 and its 11th appearance in the gold medal game, which is Sunday against Japan.
“After playing nine years in the W.N.B.A, playing overseas, and knowing the players too, I have played many players of team Serbia overseas,’’ said Griner, who is on the Phoenix Mercury and has played in China and Russia. “So just having that confidence and familiarity, I can play well.”
That was a bit of an understatement. She had 15 points and 12 rebounds. That, combined with Chelsea Gray’s 14 points and Breanna Stewart’s 12 made the U.S. unstoppable, as they have been throughout the tournament.
The United States has stomped past Nigeria, Japan, France and, in a quarterfinal game, Australia, always with comfortable margins.
Basketball: Women’s Semifinal
Final
T
SRB flag
Serbia
12 11 16 20 59
USA flag
United States
25 16 17 21 79
The U.S. women are favored to win their ninth gold, and it hasn’t looked like teams have an answer for their versatile offense and defense. They lead the tournament in scoring, assists and field goal percentage — and also in star power with the likes of Bird, A’ja Wilson and Diana Taurasi.
Wilson said the U.S. has focused on improving its defense.
“That comes from just playing with each other, trusting the next layer of defense to be there,” she said.
She added, “We’re really starting to clamp down on our defenders and our teams and we’re just meshing together.”
As the team steamrollers along, pressure may be mounting to meet the expectations of a seventh consecutive gold. Or is that galvanizing them?
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Brittney Griner led the U.S. team with 15 points.
Brittney Griner led the U.S. team with 15 points.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
“This is exactly where we want to be, so now everything is on the line,’’ Stewart said. “We’re going to do what we can to make sure that we come home with a gold.”
Still, she said, the drive to meet the mark can take something away from an Olympic experience already constricted by pandemic protocols and regulations.
“Right now there’s so much pressure that it’s seven straight overall, things like that, that you get lost in what’s actually happening and enjoying being at the Olympics,” Stewart said.
Serbia, which is ranked No. 8 in the world, was not considered a doormat. They had a comeback win over China in the quarterfinals and are the reigning EuroBasket champions; they are noted for a grinding if not flashy offense and a tough defense. Jelena Brooks leads the team in scoring with 13.5 points per game.
Yvonne Anderson, a U.S.-born player with Serbian citizenship, led Serbia against the United States with 15 points and two rebounds.
The U.S. might have already brushed past its stiffest competition in this tournament by beating Australia, which is ranked No. 2 in the world. Japan is ranked 10th.
But the Americans, who are ranked No. 1 — if it needs to be said — pledged to be ready for Japan, which defeated France on Friday night, 87-71, in the other semifinal game.
“The winning team is going to come out extra aggressive, but we have to fight through that,’’ Sylvia Fowles said. “At this point, we’re locked in on the task ahead of us. We’re just trying to win the gold.”
— Randal C. Archibold
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Allyson Felix wins her 10th Olympic medal, tying an American record in her sport.
Allyson Felix won her 10th Olympic medal, taking bronze in the 400-meter final.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
TOKYO — With nine Olympic medals (six golds and three silvers), Felix was already tied with the Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey as the most decorated female Olympian in track and field.
By winning her 10th Olympic medal in the 400-meter final, she has matched Carl Lewis as the most decorated American athlete in track and field. She also has 18 world championship medals, including 13 golds.
Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas won the 400-meter race with a time of 48.36, and Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic came in second.
Felix finished with the bronze medal, running her second fastest time ever, in 49.46. The time is faster than her silver medal performance at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Women’s 400 Meters
PLAY
Race visualization is shown at 2x speed.By Rich Harris, Eden Weingart, Alice Fang, Nikolas Diamant and Ashley Wu
For Felix, this Olympic berth — her fifth — meant something more than medals, though. Her daughter, Camryn, was born in 2018 after an emergency cesarean session at 32 weeks. She remained in the neonatal intensive care unit for weeks.
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Felix will have a chance of earning yet another Olympic medal in the 4x400 meter relay on Saturday.
Felix will have a chance of earning yet another Olympic medal in the 4x400 meter relay on Saturday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Felix’s first exercise after Camryn’s birth was a 30-minute walk.
In 2019, Felix penned an opinion piece in The New York Times criticizing the maternity policies of her longtime sponsor, Nike, who declined to guarantee that she would not be punished if she didn’t perform at her highest levels in the months after giving birth.
She came to these Games as an athletes sponsored by Athleta. And weeks before the Tokyo Games, she started her own shoe brand, Saysh.
Felix won the bronze medal wearing her own shoes on her own terms, with her family cheering from home.
She will have a chance of earning yet another Olympic medal in the 4x400 meter relay on Saturday.
Correction: Aug. 6, 2021
Because of an editing error, an earlier summary on the home page misstated the medal Allyson Felix won in the 400-meter race. It was a bronze, not a silver.
— Talya Minsberg
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/05/sports/olympics-results-tokyo-medals#allyson-felix-tenth-olympic-medal-shaunae-miller-uibo
Olympics Live Updates: Allyson Felix Wins 10th Track Medal, Jamaican Women Win a Relay
Felix tied an American medal record for track and field with a bronze in the 400-meter race. The Jamaican women won the 4x100-meter relay. Also, the U.S. women’s basketball team advanced to the gold medal game.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/05/sports/olympics-results-tokyo-medals
Olympics Updates: U.S. Baseball Will Play Japan for Gold; U.S. Women’s Soccer Wins Bronze
Published Aug. 4, 2021
Updated Aug. 5, 2021, 4:14 p.m. ET
The U.S. men’s basketball team beat Australia and will play for the gold medal. Nevin Harrison of the U.S. took gold in canoe sprint.
Here’s what you need to know:
Here’s what happened on Thursday in Tokyo.
The U.S. baseball team will play Japan in the gold medal game.
U.S. men’s basketball defeats Australia and heads to the gold medal game.
The U.S. women’s soccer team beats Australia for the bronze medal.
Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas wins the 400 meters.
The U.S. bungles a baton handoff again and fails to reach the final in the men’s 4x100-meter relay.
Belgium’s men’s field hockey team tops Australia for its first gold.
Skateboarding wraps up with only two bronze medals for the Americans.
Here’s what happened on Thursday in Tokyo.
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TOKYO — On the track, the low point for the United States on Thursday was bungling a handoff in the men’s 4x100 relay and failing to qualify for the finals. It was the fourth straight Olympics that the men’s team has had baton problems. It hasn’t won a medal in the event since 2004 or a gold since 2000.
Katie Nageotte of the United States won the gold medal in the women’s pole vault, and Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas won the men’s 400 meters.
In the 110-meter high hurdles, Hansle Parchment of Jamaica upset the world champion Grant Holloway of the U.S. The shot put ended with the same three medalists in the same order as 2016: Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs of the United States and Tom Walsh of New Zealand.
The United States men’s basketball team trailed at the half but blew open the game in the third quarter to beat Australia, 97-78, and advance to the final. Kevin Durant had 23 points.
The U.S. women’s soccer team rebounded from a semifinal disappointment with a 4-3 victory over Australia in the bronze medal game. Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd had two goals each in what might have been their final game in a major tournament. The gold medal match between Canada and Sweden was rescheduled from Friday morning in Tokyo to Friday evening in Yokohama after teams expressed concerns about the heat.
Nevin Harrison, 19, was the only American sprint canoer or kayaker to qualify for the Games, but she won the gold medal in the 200 meters.
David Taylor won the second gold medal in wrestling for the United States at these Games. Florian Wellbrock of Germany won the marathon swim event, in a hot, murky, polluted bay.
— Victor Mather
Latest Medal Count ›
TOTAL
USA flag
United States
29 35 27 91
CHN flag
China
34 24 16 74
ROC flag
Russian Olympic Committee
16 22 20 58
GBR flag
Britain
16 18 17 51
JPN flag
Japan
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The U.S. baseball team will play Japan in the gold medal game.
By advancing to the final game, the United States is guaranteed a medal.
By advancing to the final game, the United States is guaranteed a medal.Credit...Koji Watanabe/Getty Images
YOKOHAMA, Japan — The Olympic gold medal in baseball, a sport absent from the Summer Games for 13 years, will come down to the two biggest baseball countries in the world: Japan and the United States.
In a semifinal at Yokohama Baseball Stadium on Thursday, the United States topped South Korea, 7-2, behind another strong all-around performance from a roster of veteran players and young prospects. Joe Ryan, a right-handed starter, allowed one run over four and one-third innings. Four relievers, led by Anthony Gose, combined to allow just one more run the rest of the way.
All tournament long, it has felt like a collision course between top-ranked Japan, which has never won a gold medal in Olympic baseball, and the United States, which won its only one in 2000. The United States’ only blemish so far at the Tokyo Games is a 7-6 loss in 10 innings to Japan on Monday.
Because of that defeat, the United States had to beat the Dominican Republic and South Korea to advance to the gold medal game. Japan simply had to beat South Korea, which it did on Wednesday.
On Thursday, leading 2-1, the United States exploded for a five-run sixth inning that put the game out of reach. Mark Kolozsvary, Jack Lopez and Eddy Alvarez each drove in a run, while Tyler Austin capped the offensive outburst with a two-run single.
After the game, United States third baseman Todd Frazier said he told his teammates to get a good night’s sleep and that on Saturday, “You’re going to play in the best game of your life.”
By advancing to the final game, the United States is guaranteed a medal, and so is Alvarez, the team’s starting second baseman. That means Alvarez, 31, will become the sixth person — third American — to win a medal in both the Winter and Summer Olympics. At the Sochi Games in 2014, Alvarez won a silver medal as part of the United States’ 5,000-meter relay team in short-track speedskating.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said after Thursday’s game. “But the job’s not done yet.”
After the final out on Thursday, Alvarez sat in the dugout with his head down and cried. Afterward, he explained that he had been thinking about his path from his hometown, Miami, where his family ended up after fleeing Cuba, to becoming a two-time Olympian and a major league player with the Marlins last year.
“I started this journey since I was 6 years old,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to take me to being a major-league baseball player. I never thought I would ever make it to the Olympics in baseball. I owe a lot to my family and the generations that have sacrificed a lot of their time to move from a different country and that ended up giving me opportunities. I got emotional because this is much more than my accomplishments.”
South Korea, which won a gold medal the last time baseball was played in the Olympics in 2008, will face the Dominican Republic on Saturday afternoon for the bronze medal game.
— James Wagner
Adam Ondra, perhaps the world’s best climber, is shut out of winning a medal.
Adam Ondra of the Czech Republic competing in the bouldering discipline during the sport climbing final.
Adam Ondra of the Czech Republic competing in the bouldering discipline during the sport climbing final.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
What Adam Ondra could not have expected in anticipation of sport climbing’s debut in the Olympics was that he would finish higher in speed climbing, a discipline he respects but detests, than in bouldering, a discipline where he excels and has won a world championship.
His disappointing finish in bouldering, one of three climbing types mashed into a single Olympic event, upended the medal aspirations for Ondra, who is from the Czech Republic and is widely considered the world’s top climber on both artificial walls and giant rock formations.
But it helped open the possibilities to others, and 18-year-old Alberto Ginés López of Spain climbed his way to the gold medal with an unexpected all-around performance.
Nathaniel Coleman of the United States won silver, and Jakob Schubert of Austria, who barely seemed in the competition until its last moment, lifted himself to bronze.
Each athlete’s finish in each of the three disciplines — speed, bouldering and lead climbing — was multiplied together. It created an ever-changing leaderboard, shuffling again and again like a flip-number schedule at an old train station.
For a moment in Schubert’s final crawl up the wall, Ondra was in position to win gold. But when Schubert passed Ondra’s high mark, Ondra’s score doubled in an instant, and he fell all the way to sixth place.
Ginés López capitalized on a first-place finish in speed and a second-place finish in lead — two events that could not be more different.
Coleman, a steely jawed 24-year-old from Utah, did not expect to be in the finals just two nights earlier, when his qualification round ended with a mediocre boulder performance and an early slip in lead. Dejected, he congratulated his American teammate Colin Duffy for reaching the finals and said he would be in the audience to cheer him on.
But as the scores shuffled, he found himself in the eighth and final spot in the final. On Thursday he seized first place for a time, only to be passed on the lead wall, and in the lead, by Ginés López.
Tomoa Narasaki of Japan, a powerhouse on the boulder and lead circuits and a surprisingly strong speed climber, finished fourth.
Ondra’s disappointing sixth-place performance in bouldering, out of seven competitors, put him far behind. He went into the final event of lead, his best discipline, knowing that only a winning performance might rescue a medal.
It nearly did. He got higher than anyone in lead, as if to prove a point, before Schubert came along. But as Ondra dropped from first to second place in lead, his total score flipped from 24 points to 48 points, knocking him down five places overall.
— John Branch
ON THE ROCKSRead more about the calculations the climbers had to make — on the course and on the scoreboard.
U.S. men’s basketball defeats Australia and heads to the gold medal game.
Australia had not lost at these Olympics heading into the semifinal.
Australia had not lost at these Olympics heading into the semifinal.Credit...Brian Snyder/Reuters
TOKYO — Once again, the U.S. men’s basketball team struggled in a first half against a tough opponent.
Once again, the Americans silenced doubts by finding their rhythm and pulling away for victory, this time in a semifinal match against Australia, winning 97-78 and heading to the gold medal game on Saturday (Friday night in the U.S.). They will play France, who they lost to in their opening game, to try to win their fourth consecutive gold medal.
Australia, ranked No. 3 in the world, led at the half, 45-42, but that was deceptive. The Americans, once in a 15-point hole, had already begun to rally and take permanent control in the second half.
Basketball: Men’s Semifinal
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They were backed by Kevin Durant’s 23 points and Devin Booker’s 20. Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday added 11 apiece.
Durant said people should not get too excited when opponents jump to an early lead and suggested the U.S. was just sizing things up against teams that typically have more experience playing together than the Americans have had.
“We knew Australia would come out fast and hit us with a nice punch,” he said. “We know that teams want to get us down early, see how we respond. A lot of these guys got continuity for years and years so they know how to play with each other. I feel like a lot of teams are expecting us to fold early.
“We stuck with it,’’ he added, “stuck with our principles, made a couple of switches on defense, and we were able to get some momentum going into the half. Guys came out with that intensity, making shots as well.”
Australia’s aggressive three-point shooting cooled — Patty Mills led their scoring with 15 points and five rebounds — while the U.S. stepped up on defense.
“They’ve got a lot of firepower so we knew that if we gave them an inch, they would be able to take a mile,’’ said Australia’s Matisse Thybulle. “I think we played well, played hard for the majority of the game but they don’t need much to get going.”
Jock Landale said Australia had no answer when momentum shifted.
“They figure out what you’re doing and they just find ways to exploit it,’’ he said. “I think we started turning the ball over in that third quarter and they were just living in transition. And that’s tough to beat.”
The U.S. is now 9-0 against Australia in the Olympics.
Australia can still end up with its first-ever Olympic medal in basketball, playing in the bronze medal game Saturday against Slovenia, who lost in the other semifinal against France. They lost the bronze medal game by a point to Spain at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.
The U.S. team, ranked No. 1 in the world, made it to the semifinal after defeating Spain on Tuesday, 95-81, despite a similarly sluggish start.
The Americans are trying to rewrite their story line from curiously questionable team to strong finisher, if not gold medalist.
And Durant said he is confident that will be the result, as long as the Americans continue to regroup on defense.
“I’m looking forward to going out there and executing the game plan on defense,” he said. “Offensively we’re not worried about that, but going out there and executing the game plan defensively as a team, and we’ll see what happens.”
After two exhibition losses before the start of the Games, including to Australia, the United States started its Olympic campaign with their loss to France. The Americans mostly cruised through their next two contests — against far weaker opponents, Iran and the Czech Republic — and had some time to establish some rhythm as a group.
— Randal C. Archibold
The U.S. women’s soccer team beats Australia for the bronze medal.
The United States celebrated after Megan Rapinoe scored in what might have been her final game in a major tournament.
The United States celebrated after Megan Rapinoe scored in what might have been her final game in a major tournament.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
KASHIMA, Japan — It could not, even at the end, even when they were nearly across the line, be easy. Not this year.
The United States women’s soccer team came to Japan in search of gold. It is the prize the team always expects, the one it always believes it deserves.
This time, though, the opponents were better, the connections weren’t there, and neither were the results. Until Thursday, when they needed one last win, one last stand, in the bronze medal game to make something out of what could have been nothing.
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Sam Kerr (17’)
Caitlin Foord (54’)
Emily Gielnik (90’)
Megan Rapinoe (8’)
Megan Rapinoe (21’)
Carli Lloyd (45’ +1)
Carli Lloyd (51’)
The medal arrived in due course, delivered with a 4-3 victory powered by two of the team’s oldest players, Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd, who both scored two goals in what might have been their final game in a major tournament.
“It’s obviously not the type of medal we wanted,” Rapinoe had said. But she made sure they got it anyway.
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The Americans had expected to win gold in this tournament, but they said they would play hard for bronze.
The Americans had expected to win gold in this tournament, but they said they would play hard for bronze.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Even at the end, it did not go easily. Australia proved to be a determined opponent and made the United States fight to the last minute, scoring twice in the final 40 minutes after falling behind by 4-1. The Americans even played the final four minutes with 10 players, out of substitutes and having watched Alex Morgan limp off after a collision.
But the job got done.
“You can’t win them all,” Lloyd had said after a semifinal defeat had ended her team’s hope for another Olympic championship. “This was my eighth tournament, and they’ve all had a different story line. They’ve all started and finished in a different fashion. Some have been pretty, some have been ugly, some we’ve just scraped by. This one we didn’t get by.”
— Andrew Das
PHOTOS AND HIGHLIGHTSRead full coverage of the U.S. team’s bronze medal win.
Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas wins the 400 meters.
Steven Gardiner celebrated after winning gold.
Steven Gardiner celebrated after winning gold.Credit...Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
TOKYO — Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas emerged from a crowded pack to win the gold in the men’s 400 meters. Gardiner, who finished in 43.85 seconds, was challenged by Anthony Jose Zambrano of Colombia, who finished second, and Kirani James of Grenada in third. It was James’s third straight Olympic medal in the event: He won the gold in 2012 and the silver in 2016. Grenada has three Olympic medals in the country’s history, and they all belong to James.
Michael Norman, the U.S. champion, finished fifth, one spot behind his American teammate, Michael Cherry.
Men’s 400 Meters
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Race visualization is shown at 2x speed.By Rich Harris, Eden Weingart, Alice Fang, Nikolas Diamant and Ashley Wu
Men’s 1,500 Meter Semifinals
There has been so much discussion about the fast track and quick times at Olympic Stadium since the start of track and field last week. World records. National records. Personal bests.
And sometimes, those records are falling earlier than expected — in qualifying heats.
Ask Matthew Centrowitz, who had been attempting to defend his Olympic title in the men’s 1,500 meters. He ran his fastest time of the year on Thursday in his semifinal heat — and fell short of advancing to Saturday’s final. His time of 3:33.69 was good enough for ninth, well behind Abel Kipsang of Kenya, who set an Olympic record (3:31.65) and won the heat.
Cole Hocker, the 20-year-old American who won the event at the U.S. trials and only recently completed his sophomore season at the University of Oregon, was more fortunate. He merely had to run a lifetime best of 3:33.87 to finish second in his heat and secure one of five automatic spots in the final.
Centrowitz, 31, said he was disappointed with his tactics.
“We all knew it was going to be a fast race, and I just put too much emphasis on being right off the shoulder of whoever was in the lead,” he said. “When they’re running the Olympic record in the heats, you can’t be out in Lane 2, Lane 3 and wasting energy like that.”
Asked about possibly competing through another Olympic cycle, Centrowitz said: “It’s hard to say. We’ll have to finish the season up and see how it goes. Obviously, at some point, age catches up to us.”
Women’s Pole Vault
Katie Nageotte of the U.S. made sure her first Olympic experience was a memorable one. She cleared 16 feet three-quarters of an inch to win the gold. Anzhelika Sidorova of Russia finished second, and Holly Bradshaw of Britain was third.
Track and Field: Women’s Pole Vault ›
GOLD
Katie Nageotte
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United States
SILVER
Anzhelika Sidorova
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Russian Olympic Committee
BRONZE
Holly Bradshaw
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Britain
The Decathlon and the Heptathlon
The multi-events crowned their champions. Damian Warner was the Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, setting Canadian and Olympic records with 9,018 points. Kevin Mayer of France won the silver, and Ashley Moloney won the bronze. Garrett Scantling of the U.S. was fourth.
And Nafissatou Thiam of Belgium became the first woman to repeat as the Olympic heptathlon champion since Jackie Joyner Kersee won consecutive titles for the U.S. in 1988 and 1992. Thiam was joined on the medal podium by a pair of Dutch athletes: Anouk Vetter in second and Emma Oosterwegel in third.
— Scott Cacciola
The U.S. bungles a baton handoff again and fails to reach the final in the men’s 4x100-meter relay.
The Americans lagged in their heat of the 4x100-meter relay and will miss the final.
The Americans lagged in their heat of the 4x100-meter relay and will miss the final.Credit...David Ramos/Getty Images
TOKYO — The United States failed to qualify for the final of the men’s 4x100-meter relay after bungling a baton transfer, yet again, and placing sixth in its heat.
The baton failure slowed down the team, as the United States finished in 38.10 seconds. China, Canada and Italy took the top three spots in the heat to automatically qualify for Friday’s final.
The baton exchange has given the U.S. men trouble in the past. At the 2016 Rio Games, the United States finished third, but the team was disqualified after the first exchange was ruled to have taken place outside the exchange zone.
The men’s 4x100-meter team in 2008 and 2012 and the women’s relay in 2004 and 2008 all failed to make it around the track successfully.
The men got off to a mediocre start on Thursday from Trayvon Bromell and the sloppy baton passing spelled doom, despite the United States’ unmatched depth in sprinting.
“I just didn’t do my job,” Bromell said after the race. He was the fastest man in the world coming into the Games but failed to make the final of the 100 meters as well.
The baton pass that felled the Americans came in the transfer between the second and third legs as Fred Kerley handed the stick to Ronnie Baker, but far too slowly. Both men were finalists in the 100 meters, with Kerley taking the silver in that race.
The result drew immediate criticism from the biggest name in American track and field.
“The U.S.A. team did everything wrong in the men’s relay,” Carl Lewis said on Twitter. “The passing system is wrong, athletes running the wrong legs, and it was clear that there was no leadership. It was a total embarrassment, and completely unacceptable for a U.S.A. team to look worse than the A.A.U. kids I saw.”
Minutes later, the U.S. disappointment continued, as Hansle Parchment of Jamaica upset the world champion Grant Holloway in the 110-meter high hurdles. Holloway had the lead early but could not hang on. Ronald Levy of Jamaica won the bronze, relegating Devon Allen of the United States to fourth.
The sprint relay, however, continues to be the mystery that the U.S. team cannot solve. It has not won a medal in the event since 2004, when the Americans took the silver medal. Not making the final of the race brings the frustration to a new level. Teams from China, Canada, Italy, Germany and Ghana all outran the Americans.
The United States won the event at the 2019 world championships, but that group included Justin Gatlin, who did not make the Olympic team, and Christian Coleman, who missed the Olympics because he is serving a drug suspension.
— Matthew Futterman and Evan Easterling
The Relay Curse Continues for the U.S. Men
Aug. 5, 2021
An athlete from Burkina Faso has won his country’s first Olympic medal.
Hugues Fabrice Zango jumped 17.47 meters in the men’s triple jump finals, coming in third place.
Hugues Fabrice Zango jumped 17.47 meters in the men’s triple jump finals, coming in third place.Credit...Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters
Nearly half a century ago, Burkina Faso began competing at the Summer Games, never once bringing home a medal.
Now its wait is finally over.
Hugues Fabrice Zango jumped 17.47 meters in the men’s triple jump finals on Thursday, coming in third place and earning the bronze medal. Portugal claimed gold, while China took home silver.
Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, Burkina Faso’s president, applauded Zango on Twitter, saying he had “followed the magnificent performance of our great champion from start to finish.”
“Thank you Hugues for this bronze medal,” Mr. Kaboré wrote. “We are all proud of you.”
Zango, who in addition to his athletics is pursuing a doctorate in electrical engineering in France, was also one of the country’s flag-bearers in the opening ceremony. In an Instagram post leading up to his departure to Japan, Zango wrote that he promised to “represent the country with dignity.”
Zango first stepped on to the Olympic stage at the 2016 Rio Games, but his triple jump there, at 15.99 meters, landed him in 17th place.
At the 2019 World Athletics Championship in Doha, Qatar, Zango won his first international medal, recording a triple jump of 17.66 meters to earn him the bronze. He set his hopes to win a medal for his country on an even bigger stage.
“I would like to win an Olympic medal for Burkina Faso. We’ve never won an Olympic medal. We are not far,” he said in an April 2020 interview on the Olympics website.
Burkina Faso has appeared in 10 Olympics Games so far, including Tokyo. It made its debut at the 1972 Olympic Games, when the country was then known as Upper Volta. Its sole athlete at the time was André Bicaba, who competed in the 100-meter sprint, according to the Tokyo Olympics website. Its next appearance was not until the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, when it competed as Burkina Faso.
— Alexandra E. Petri
Belgium’s men’s field hockey team tops Australia for its first gold.
The Belgian team celebrating after winning gold.
The Belgian team celebrating after winning gold.Credit...John Locher/Associated Press
TOKYO — The Belgian men’s field hockey team, runners-up at the Rio Games in 2016, vowed not to finish short again. And on Thursday, following a tense penalty shootout with top-ranked Australia at Oi Hockey Stadium, Belgium prevailed, 3-2, to win its first Olympic gold in field hockey.
“Standing on the biggest stage on the biggest podium for a small hockey country as Belgium is a crown on all the hard work,” forward Thomas Briels told reporters.
Tied at 1 after regulation, the two top-ranked teams in the world faced off in a shootout. Alexander Hendrickx, Belgium’s standout scorer, scored the goal that gave his team the lead. Vincent Vanasch, Belgium’s goalkeeper, made what would have been a gold-clinching save only to see it erased after video review. But he saved the second attempt, too.
“We have the best goalkeeper in the world and he proved himself again,” Hendrickx said.
Hendrickx was at the 2016 Games, but only as a reserve player outside of the Olympic Village. He dedicated himself to improving and, five years later, he finished the Olympic tournament with 14 goals, twice as many as the next highest scorer.
During the last Olympics, Belgium fell to Argentina, 4-2, in the gold medal match. Over the following years, the Belgian national team worked to improve, even using sophisticated techniques to train its players to withstand the punishing heat and humidity of Tokyo during the Summer Games. It worked, as Belgium went from owning just one Olympic medal (bronze in 1920) to claiming them in back-to-back Olympics.
“We were incredibly happy in Rio in getting the silver medal, and it was our goal to have an Olympic medal, which was crazy for hockey in Belgium that day,” Briels said. “In five years, a lot has happened. We became a really mature team and we played a lot of finals. We became a world champion, a European champion, and this was something we absolutely wanted.”
— James Wagner
Skateboarding wraps up with only two bronze medals for the Americans.
Keegan Palmer of Australia won gold in the men’s park event.
Keegan Palmer of Australia won gold in the men’s park event.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Showing off a new wave of aerial acrobatics and risky board-flipping tricks, an international field of skateboarders outshined the Americans in the final skateboarding event of the Olympics, continuing the two-week demonstration of the sport’s worldwide reach.
The United States struggled to find the medal stand in a sport that it invented and pushed into the Olympics. Americans skated away with just two of the 12 medals awarded at the Tokyo Games, skateboarding’s Olympic debut.
They were a pair of bronzes — the first by Jagger Eaton in men’s street last week, the other by Cory Juneau on Thursday in men’s park.
The park competition, filled with high-flying spins, technical board flips and long grinds on the lip of the bowl at Ariake Urban Sports Park, looked to be the salvation for a U.S. roster deep in talent.
But only Juneau squeaked into the final. His best run there scored 84.13 points, behind Keegan Palmer of Australia, who won gold by scoring 95.83, and Pedro Barros of Brazil, who earned silver.
The world’s No. 1-ranked park skater, Heimana Reynolds of the United States, and his American teammate Zion Wright each fell short of qualifying. Both had arrived with reasonable hopes of earning medals.
Reynolds finished 13th, Wright 11th. But as Reynolds explained, with a smile on his face and a smiley face painted on the nail of his middle finger, the American export of skateboarding, as a sport and a culture, is global.
“Skateboarding doesn’t discriminate where you’re from, who you are or anything like that,” he said. “A lot of these people barely speak English, and they’re some of my best friends. We all share the same language of skateboarding, and I think that’s the most beautiful thing about it.”
Skaters said that the results may have reflected the pandemic. Skateboarding’s contest circuit shut down for two years, so skaters worked on new tricks privately, then sprung them on the Olympic stage.
Brazil’s Luiz Francisco, for example, earned the top spot in qualifications thanks to his series of risky flip tricks, where the feet leave the board as it rotates. One was a tre flip, where the board both spins 360 degrees and flips.
“When we first got here, the first couple days of practice, I definitely saw some tricks I hadn’t seen before,” Reynolds said. “And it really opened my eyes to, like, wow, look at the level that skateboarding is today.”
Skateboarding Medals ›
Men’s Street
Yuto Horigome
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Japan
Women’s Street
Momiji Nishiya
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Japan
Women’s Park
Sakura Yosozumi
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Japan
Men’s Park
Keegan Palmer
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Australia
Skaters from Japan won gold in the first three skateboarding events: men’s and women’s street and women’s park. That should bolster the sport’s popularity in Japan, where skateboarding’s long history has unfolded mostly in the shadows.
The other theme for skateboarding at these Games had been the youth of many top competitors. The event had no minimum age requirement, so five of the six youngest athletes at the Olympics were skateboarders, all of them women.
At the women’s street contest last week, the medal stand had two 13-year-olds and a 16-year-old. At women’s park on Wednesday, all the medalists were teenagers, including 12-year-old Kokona Hiraki of Japan, who won silver, and 13-year-old Sky Brown of Britain, who won bronze.
The men’s events skewed older. The qualifying rounds included 46-year-old Rune Glifberg of Denmark, who won an X Games medal in 1995, before most Olympic skateboarders were born. Another 46-year-old, Dallas Oberholzer of South Africa, was also in the field, sporting a smile and graying stubble.
Each rode as a sort of ambassador to skateboarding’s past; both finished last in their heats and did not make the final.
— John Branch
U.S. Pushed for Olympic Skateboarding, but Came Up Short on Medals
Aug. 5, 2021
U.S. men are getting better boxing results, but they’re still chasing gold.
Duke Ragan of the United States, left on the podium, earned the silver medal in the featherweight boxing division, losing to Albert Batyrgaziev of Russia, second from left, in the gold medal bout. Samuel Takyi of Ghana and Lazaro Alvarez of Cuba each earned bronze because they lost their semifinals.
Duke Ragan of the United States, left on the podium, earned the silver medal in the featherweight boxing division, losing to Albert Batyrgaziev of Russia, second from left, in the gold medal bout. Samuel Takyi of Ghana and Lazaro Alvarez of Cuba each earned bronze because they lost their semifinals.Credit...Frank Franklin Ii/Associated Press
TOKYO — Albert Batyrgaziev of Russia won the boxing featherweight gold medal on Thursday, and in the process stopped the first of three Americans trying to win gold in men’s boxing for the first time in 17 years.
Batyrgaziev, using flurries of speed and playing squarely into the rules of amateur boxing that reward many punches in a short amount of time, won a 3-2 split decision over Duke Ragan, a fighter from Cincinnati who, like Batyrgaziev, is in the early part of his professional career.
Batyrgaziev and Ragan have seven professional fights combined — all wins — and after their bout for gold immediately started selling a possible rematch down the line.
“That would be an additional motivation, an additional motive to keep training, in order to meet again as professionals,” said Batyrgaziev, 23, who started in kickboxing before switching to boxing at 18 with the goal of becoming an Olympian.
Ragan had been hoping to join Andre Ward, a fellow American who won gold as a light heavyweight at the 2004 Games in Athens and encouraged Ragan throughout his run in Tokyo. Since then, the biggest Olympic boxing success from the United States has been Claressa Shields, who won Olympic gold in 2012 and 2016 as a middleweight before she turned pro in boxing and mixed martial arts.
Claressa Shields, Champion Boxer, Says Sexism Holds Her Back
March 4, 2021
“I’m proud of you bro,” Ward said on Twitter after the fight. “You did your family & your city proud. Rest up, regroup, time to win a world title.”
Ragan, who started his professional career during the coronavirus pandemic in a series of bouts organized by the boxing promotion company Top Rank in Las Vegas, said he hoped to take revenge on Batyrgaziev on a bigger stage, “like fighting for a world title or something.”
Boxing: Men’s Feather ›
GOLD
Albert Batyrgaziev
ROC flag
Russian Olympic Committee
SILVER
Duke Ragan
USA flag
United States
BRONZE
Lazaro Alvarez
CUB flag
Cuba
BRONZE
Samuel Takyi
GHA flag
Ghana
Their bout was one of nearly 300 that have played out during these Games at Kokugikan Arena, a storied, intimate hall in the Ryogoku neighborhood of Tokyo that is known as Japan’s main home for sumo wrestling. The arena, though modified for the Olympics, kept the portraits of 32 grand champion wrestlers, known as yokozuna, in the rafters. And it retained its familiar, deep-red carpet floor and upper-deck seats, although the mats along the mezzanine were missing their signature cushions — zabuton in Japanese — that would normally be used for prime seating all the way up to the sumo ring.
Ragan had qualified for these Games in part because of changes to the way boxing was organized for the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee had suspended the International Boxing Association because of problems with judging, ethical violations and corruption, and placed the sport under the control of a special task force.
The Pandemic Has Some of the Best Boxers Watching the Olympics From Afar
June 20, 2021
Then, the coronavirus pandemic prompted the cancellations of several qualifying events, and the task force decided to use results from earlier tournaments to fill open spots for the hundreds of bouts staged in Tokyo, which worked in Ragan’s favor.
Two other American men are competing for gold: the lightweight Keyshawn Davis, who has a semifinal on Friday, and the super heavyweight Richard Torrez Jr., who fights for gold Sunday in one of the final events of the Olympics. Oshae Jones took bronze on Tuesday after losing a women’s welterweight semifinal.
In Olympic boxing, each of the losing semifinalists wins a bronze medal without fighting another bout.
Ken Belson contributed reporting.
— Oskar Garcia
Why some Japanese athletes are apologizing for not winning gold.
Takeru Kitazono on the pommel horse last week.
Takeru Kitazono on the pommel horse last week.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
TOKYO — Kenichiro Fumita was crying so hard that he could barely get the words out.
“I wanted to return my gratitude to the concerned people and volunteers who are running the Olympics during this difficult time,” Mr. Fumita, a Greco-Roman wrestler, said between sobs after finishing his final bout at the Games this week.
“I ended up with this shameful result,” he said, bobbing his head abjectly. “I’m truly sorry.”
Mr. Fumita, 25, had just won a silver medal.
In what has become a familiar — and, at times, wrenching — sight during the Tokyo Olympics, many Japanese athletes have wept through post-competition interviews, apologizing for any result short of gold. Even some who had won a medal, like Mr. Fumita, lamented that they had let down their team, their supporters, even their country.
Apologizing for being second best in the world would seem to reflect an absurdly unforgiving metric of success. But for these athletes competing in their home country, the emotionally charged displays of repentance — which often follow pointed questions from the Japanese news media — can represent an intricate mix of regret, gratitude, obligation and humility.
“If you don’t apologize for only getting silver, you might be criticized,” said Takuya Yamazaki, a sports lawyer who represents players’ unions in Japan.
From an early age, Japanese athletes “are not really supposed to think like they are playing sports for themselves,” Mr. Yamazaki said. “Especially in childhood, there are expectations from adults, teachers, parents or other senior people. So it’s kind of a deeply rooted mind-set.”
The expectations placed on the athletes have been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, which made the Olympics deeply unpopular with the Japanese public before the events began. Many may feel more pressure than usual to deliver medals to justify holding the Games, as anxiety swells over rising coronavirus cases in Japan.
“I feel fed up with myself,” said Kai Harada, a sports climber, vigorously wiping his eyes during an interview after failing to make the finals. Takeru Kitazono, a gymnast who finished sixth on the horizontal bar, fought back tears as he spoke of his supporters. “I wanted to return my gratitude with my performance,” he said. “But I couldn’t.”
— Motoko Rich
Second Best in the World, but Still Saying Sorry
Aug. 5, 2021
April Ross and Alix Klineman are headed to beach volleyball’s gold medal game.
April Ross and Alix Klineman of the United States move into their first gold medal match as a team.
April Ross and Alix Klineman of the United States move into their first gold medal match as a team.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
April Ross is going to play for her third Olympic medal in beach volleyball.
On Thursday morning, as the sand baked in the sun and a speckling of spectators looked for patches of shade, the American pair of Ross and Alix Klineman defeated Anouk Vergé-Dépré and Joana Heidrich of Switzerland in two sets, 21-12, 21-11, to advance to the gold medal game.
Ross won a silver medal at the 2012 Games in London with her partner Jen Kessy, and a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Games with Kerri Walsh Jennings.
Women’s Semifinal
Final
J. Heidrich / A. Verge-Depre
SUI flag
Switzerland
12 11
A. Klineman / A. Ross
USA flag
United States
21 21
Now with Klineman, an indoor volleyball player who made the transition to beach volleyball in 2017, Ross is looking to add an elusive gold medal to her collection.
They expected their semifinal match to be a difficult one. Vergé-Dépré and Heidrich had advanced to the semifinals with an impressive run, defeating Brazil, 21-19, 18-21, 15-12, on Tuesday.
When asked if going for any Olympic medal was getting to be old news, Ross laughed.
“No!” she said emphatically. “We are going to prepare as hard as we can and recover as hard as we can for tomorrow.”
That rest will have to come quickly. The final will be played in the midday Tokyo sun. But Ross and Klineman do not seem worried. They are getting used to the heat, they said, and are mentally prepared for the sweltering conditions expected during the final.
They will face the Australians Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy, who hope to follow in the footsteps of Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst, the last Australian duo to win an Olympic medal in the sport, a gold in 2000.
The gold medal game is set for 11:30 a.m. on Friday in Tokyo, 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.
— Talya Minsberg
50-kilometer racewalking is striding off the Olympic stage.
Massimo Stano of Italy won the men’s 20-kilometer race walk at the Tokyo Games.
Massimo Stano of Italy won the men’s 20-kilometer race walk at the Tokyo Games.Credit...Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
TOKYO — Only the purest of the purists revel in 50-kilometer racewalking.
All that arm swinging and hip swaying for more than three hours.
You thought the marathon was long at 26.2 miles in two-plus hours?
The 50-kilometer racewalking world-record holder, Yohann Diniz of France, raced, er, walked the course of about 31 miles in three hours 32 minutes and 33 seconds in 2011. The more common 20-kilometer race walk is a sprint by comparison.
So for the brave few aficionados hooked on the race, the 50-kilometer race on Friday morning local time will be bittersweet.
It will be the final version of the race at the Olympics. Yes, the 50-kilometer event is walking into the sunset and will not return for the Paris Games in 2024.
The Olympic committee has decided the race does not fit with the organization’s stated mission of gender equality. It is the only event on the Olympic program that has no approximate equivalent for women. Rather than add a women’s race, the I.O.C. will introduce an unspecified mixed-team racewalking event.
This has Elliott Denman upset. Denman, a sportswriter who was a racewalker for the U.S. team in the Melbourne Games in 1956, said in an email that he was angered by the removal of “the longest and toughest of all events.”
The race, which was introduced in 1932 at the Los Angeles Games and held every Summer Olympics since then except the Montreal Games in 1976, is apparently too slow and tedious for younger sports fans. On television, the walkers also look like they’re jogging, which doesn’t help the sport.
“Unless the situation takes a drastic U-turn somewhere down the road, and don’t get your hopes up about it — the Sapporo 50K champion will be the 20th and last in an amazing series,” Denman wrote. Racewalkers, he added, “loved every step of their long journeys” and “now, for all that effort, they’re being told to ‘go take a hike.’”
The race, like the men’s and women’s marathons, was moved from Tokyo to Sapporo, on the northern island of Hokkaido, because it’s cooler there. It will begin at 5:30 a.m. local time, just after sunrise, with one final medal ceremony to follow.
— Ken Belson
Olympic organizers apologize after a slip of the tongue at a medal ceremony.
TOKYO — As the Ukrainian synchronized swimming duo Marta Fedina and Anastasia Savchuk prepared to stride onto the podium to celebrate their bronze model, the announcer at the Tokyo Aquatics Center could not have made a more awkward slip of the tongue.
Instead of referring to Fedina and Savchuk as hailing from Ukraine, they were announced as having represented the Russian Olympic Committee, the label Russian athletes are competing under in Tokyo as part of the punishments imposed after their country’s recent doping scandals.
Russia and Ukraine remain locked in a yearslong conflict dating to 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.
Podium announcements at the Games are made first in French, and then in Japanese and English. According to Masa Takaya, a spokesman for the 2020 Olympic organizing committee, the announcer quickly realized that a mistake had been made in French and corrected it before the wrong designation could be made in the other two languages.
The slip-up led to some confusion during the ceremony. A Russian pair had won gold in the competition and were amazed to hear their team’s name called out twice.
“There was a pause, no one had a clue of what was going on, but the situation was straightened out later,” Svetlana Kolesnichenko, one of the Russian gold medalists, told Russia’s state-run news agency TASS.
Takaya said it was “purely an operational mistake” and issued another apology to the athletes and Ukraine’s delegation in Tokyo.
— Tariq Panja
Nevin Harrison, 19, wins a rare U.S. gold medal in canoe sprint.
Nevin Harrison of the United States after winning the gold medal in the women’s canoe single 200-meter final on Thursday.
Nevin Harrison of the United States after winning the gold medal in the women’s canoe single 200-meter final on Thursday.Credit...Naomi Baker/Getty Images
TOKYO — There aren’t many world-class canoers from the United States. There’s really just one.
At 17, Nevin Harrison was the only American to make a final at the last canoe/kayak sprint world championships in 2019. She won the gold medal.
At 19, she was the only American canoe or kayak sprinter to even qualify for the Olympics. On Thursday in the 200 meters, she won a gold medal again.
Canoe Sprint: Women’s Canoe Single 200m Final A ›
TIME
GOLD
Nevin Harrison
USA flag
United States
45.932
SILVER
Laurence Vincent-Lapointe
CAN flag
Canada
46.786
+0.854
BRONZE
Liudmyla Luzan
UKR flag
Ukraine
47.034
+1.102
4
Dorota Borowska
POL flag
Poland
47.116
+1.184
5
Antia Jacome
ESP flag
Spain
47.226
+1.294
6
Lin Wenjun
CHN flag
China
47.608
+1.676
7
Olesia Romasenko
ROC flag
Russian Olympic Committee
47.777
+1.845
8
Katie Vincent
CAN flag
Canada
47.834
+1.902
She blasted to victory in 45.932 seconds, beating Laurence Vincent-Lapointe of Canada and Liudmyla Luzan of Ukraine.
“I definitely was shaking a little at the start,” Harrison said after her win. “It was scary, to say the least.”
The 200 meters, almost a dead sprint from start to finish, is the shortest race on the Olympic program. Though Harrison says she does rest a bit in the second 50.
“It’s such a crazy big dream,” she said of the gold medal, “that it doesn’t even seem like it’s achievable.”
Canoe/kayak sprint is also called flat-water to distinguish it from the white-water canoe slalom events held earlier in the Games. Flat-water canoeing for women is making its debut at the Tokyo Olympics; before these Games, women had competed only in kayak.
“It’s been a hard journey because I didn’t have anyone to follow,” Harrison said. “I hope to be that person for the next generation.” She promised to return for the Paris Games in 2024.
Harrison’s medal was the first in canoe or kayak sprint for the United States since Greg Barton won four total medals at the 1984, ’88 and ’92 Games (one of them with Norman Bellingham). No American woman had won a canoe/kayak sprint medal since 1964.
— Victor Mather
Marathon swimmers battle heat and bacteria. Oh, and each other.
Florian Wellbrock of Germany won the gold medal in the 10-kilometer swim.
Florian Wellbrock of Germany won the gold medal in the 10-kilometer swim.Credit...Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
TOKYO — They are among the Games’ earliest risers and some of its hardiest competitors, waking well before dawn for a race start at 6:30 a.m. that requires diving into a hot, polluted bay that one competitor likened to a “warm puddle.”
For nearly two hours, they knife a ragged line through the murky water and occasionally get hit by fish, until the end, when they thrash furiously to a finish that belies the languid pace of the 10-kilometer swim and often with just seconds separating gold and silver.
Marathon swimming is much different from the pool competitions that get more attention at the Games. And it is not just because of the longer distance. It is always conducted in open water, and around the world, that means low temperatures, high temperatures, flotsam and jetsam, sea creatures, currents and waves.
It is an accepted part of the challenge, and on Thursday, Florian Wellbrock, 23, of Germany met it best, winning the men’s race in 1 hour 48 minutes 33.7 seconds.
“The temperature today was the biggest competitor,” he said, after dominating 25 challengers. “I beat it, and I beat everything in this race.”
He defeated Kristof Rasovszky of Hungary, who came in at 1:48:59, and Gregorio Paltrinieri of Italy, who won the bronze with a time of 1:49:01.1.
On Wednesday, in the women’s race, Ana Marcela Cunha, 29, of Brazil won in 1:59:30.8, beating Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands at 1:59:31.7 in a stroke-for-stroke finale, while Kareena Lee of Australia took bronze at 1:59:32.5.
“It was tough conditions at the end,” van Rouwendaal, among 25 swimmers in the race, said. “It got warmer and warmer when we went faster and faster.”
In Tokyo, the heat and pollution posed challenges beyond the norm.
Despite the early-morning start, the air temperature hovered around 81 degrees at Odaiba Marine Park, and it felt much hotter. The water temperature, 84 degrees, was not far from the cutoff of 88 degrees set by the sport’s governing body for safe swimming, a measure taken especially seriously after the death from heat stroke of Fran Crippen, an American long-distance swimmer, in an open-water race in the United Arab Emirates in 2010.
Marathon Swimming Medals ›
Women’s 10km
Ana Marcela Cunha
BRA flag
Brazil
Men’s 10km
Florian Wellbrock
GER flag
Germany
Swimmers in an event in the bay before the Olympics likened the water to a toilet bowl, but Tokyo officials insisted that a high-tech filtration system would keep the level of dangerous E. coli bacteria low. And they installed a water circulation system that brings cooler water from the bottom to the surface.
Most swimmers on Wednesday acknowledged the challenges but shrugged them off as just part of the sport. They are allowed occasional sips of bottled fluids handed to them on long poles by boaters following them, and several said they had made sure to take advantage of those opportunities.
But churning at race pace for nearly two hours still takes a toll.
Ferry Weertman, a Dutch swimmer, trained in Curaçao. Yet the heat was still a factor as he passed a group of swimmers who “got gassed” midway through the race, chasing the leaders.
“Florian had a big gap in the beginning, and I was just a little behind, and I just couldn’t really catch up,” said Weertman, who finished seventh in a time of 1:51:30.8.
Not everyone was impressed with the heat. Rasovszky, the silver medalist, said he had trained in a lake in his native Hungary where the temperature was more than 90 degrees.
“So this,” he said, “was really cool for me.”
— Randal C. Archibold
Covid at the Games: 31 people test positive, a new daily high.
Maria Alzigkouzi Kominea and Evangelia Papazoglou of Greece competing in synchronized swimming at the Tokyo Aquatics Center on Monday.
Maria Alzigkouzi Kominea and Evangelia Papazoglou of Greece competing in synchronized swimming at the Tokyo Aquatics Center on Monday.Credit...Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
Tokyo 2020 organizers reported 31 new coronavirus cases on Thursday among people credentialed for the Olympics, setting a new high for a second day.
Among the new cases is a synchronized swimmer from Greece, who became the latest member of the team to test positive. The entire team has withdrawn from competition after at least seven athletes and staff members were found to be infected.
A total of at least 358 people connected to the Games have tested positive in Tokyo since July 1, including 32 athletes, according to organizers. Most of the infections have occurred among Japanese nationals, including contractors and others working at Olympic venues.
While a tightly controlled bubble has kept the virus from derailing the Games, infections are spiraling across Japan, which is recording more than 10,000 new cases every day, the highest rate since the start of the pandemic. Despite restrictions on alcohol sales and other measures in Tokyo and much of the country, average daily cases have risen by 219 percent over the past two weeks, according to New York Times data.
On Thursday, the Japanese government expanded emergency measures to several other prefectures as experts warned that the highly contagious Delta variant was placing a growing strain on the medical system. Health officials reported 5,042 new cases in Tokyo and 14,211 nationwide, both daily records.
Earlier, Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister in charge of Japan’s coronavirus response, told a meeting of experts that many parts of the country were seeing infections rise at “an unprecedented and phenomenal speed.”
— Shashank Bengali and Hisako Ueno
New Reported Coronavirus Cases at the Olympics
So far, at least 358 people with Olympic credentials, including 32 athletes, have tested positive for the coronavirus in Japan. Others have tested positive before their departure to the Games and are not included in the chart below.
July 2
July 12
July 22
Aug.
Aug. 5
5
10
15
20
25
30 cases
Athletes who have tested positive for the coronavirus
Scientists say that positive tests are expected with daily testing programs, even among the vaccinated. Some athletes who have tested positive have not been publicly identified, and some who tested positive were later cleared to participate in the Games.
Date
Name
Sport
Country
Aug. 4
Anna Chernysheva
Karate
Russian Olympic Committee
Aug. 3
Walid Bidani
Weightlifting
Algeria
July 30
Sparkle McKnight
Track and field
Trinidad and Tobago
Paula Reto
Golf
South Africa
Andwuelle Wright
Track and field
Trinidad and Tobago
July 29
Germán Chiaraviglio
Track and field
Argentina
Sam Kendricks
Track and field
United States
July 28
Bruno Rosetti
Rowing
Italy
July 27
Mohammed Fardj
Wrestling
Algeria
Evangelia Platanioti
Artistic swimming
Greece
Show all
Note: Data is shown by the date in Tokyo when a case was announced. Some athletes tested positive before arriving in Japan. Table includes athletes who tested positive since July 1, 2021.Sources: Tokyo 2020 organizing committee and staff reports.By Jasmine C. Lee and John Yoon
Ryan Crouser set an Olympic record. Then he did so again and again.
Ryan Crouser won gold and set the Olympic record in men's shot put.
Ryan Crouser won gold and set the Olympic record in men's shot put.Credit...Andrej Isakovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ryan Crouser, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist, gave track and field fans a glimpse in June of what to expect at the Tokyo Games.
On his fourth throw of the evening during the U.S. Olympic trials, he shattered the world record with a 23.37-meter throw.
So when he stepped onto the field in Tokyo, Crouser had high hopes.
His first throw set a new Olympic record, beating his previous record set at the Rio Games.
Track and Field Medals ›
Men’s Triple Jump
Pedro Pichardo
POR flag
Portugal
Men’s Shot-Put
Ryan Crouser
USA flag
United States
Men’s 110m Hurdles
Hansle Parchment
JAM flag
Jamaica
Men’s 20km Walk
Massimo Stano
ITA flag
Italy
Women’s Pole Vault
Katie Nageotte
USA flag
United States
Men’s 400m
Steven Gardiner
BAH flag
Bahamas
Men’s 50km Walk
Aug. 5, 4:30 p.m. E.T.
On his next throw, he set another Olympic record.
Then he did it again and again. All told, Crouser set new Olympic records in three attempts. He also fell just short of his own world record, throwing 23.30 meters.
Joe Kovacs of the United States won the silver, and Tom Walsh of New Zealand finished with bronze. Crouser, Kovacs, and Walsh all won the same medals at the 2016 Olympics.
Crouser had one thing to say when he finished. He looked at the camera and held up a sign: “Grandpa, we did it, 2020 Olympic champion!”
In the triple jump, Hugues Fabrice Zango won the bronze, bringing home Burkina Faso’s first Olympic medal ever.
And on the track, Hansle Parchment of Jamaica upset Grant Holloway of the United States in the 110-meter hurdles. Holloway, the reigning world champion in the event, set a world indoor record in the 60-meter hurdles and nearly set a world record at the U.S. Olympic trials in June.
— Talya Minsberg
A Chinese gold medalist was asked about her ‘masculine’ appearance, prompting outrage.
Gong Lijiao of China won gold in the shot-put competition on Sunday.
Gong Lijiao of China won gold in the shot-put competition on Sunday.Credit...Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
After Gong Lijiao won China’s first gold medal in an Olympic field event on Sunday, a reporter for state news media asked about her “masculine” appearance and her life plans, setting off a heated debate about the restrictive discourse surrounding women.
Gong, a four-time Olympian, placed first in the women’s shot-put competition with a personal best of 20.58 meters (67.5 feet).
An interview that aired Sunday on the state-owned CCTV included a sports correspondent’s contentious observation: “Gong Lijiao gives me the impression of a masculine woman.”
The reporter, Lu You, then asked about Gong’s future plans: “You used to be a masculine woman for the sake of shot-put. But moving forward, can you be yourself?”
Gong, 32, seemed caught off guard. “If I don’t train later on, then maybe I will lose weight, and then get married and have kids,” she said. “The path one must walk in life.”
The segment continued with a videographer and Lu asking the athlete whether she had a boyfriend, what she was looking for in a partner and whether she or a prospective partner would be better at arm-wrestling.
On Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, a discussion page on Gong and the question “Is marriage the only thing we can discuss about women?” had been viewed almost 300 million times on Thursday, generating more than 140,000 posts.
Many internet users criticized the CCTV reporter’s questions, comparing them to those asked by nosy relatives. Others asked why a gold medalist was subjected to a stereotypical line of inquiry.
One trending post stated that men were simply not good enough to marry Gong, adding: “Discourse about women isn’t limited to marriage and physical appearances. There are also dreams and success.”
Gong responded to the post from her official Weibo account. “This completely says what I’m thinking!” she wrote. “Thank you!”
— Tiffany May and Elsie Chen
Tokyo Olympics on Thursday: No Easy Wins
Speed climbing is just the latest sport that didn’t seem to go as expected during these Games.
The U.S. bungles a baton handoff again and fails to reach the final in the men’s 4x100-meter relay.
TOKYO — The United States failed to qualify for the final of the men’s 4x100-meter relay after bungling a baton transfer, yet again, and placing sixth in its heat.
The baton failure slowed down the team, as the United States finished in 38.10 seconds. China, Canada and Italy took the top three spots in the heat to automatically qualify for Friday’s final.
The baton exchange has given the U.S. men trouble in the past. At the 2016 Rio Games, the United States finished third, but the team was disqualified after the first exchange was ruled to have taken place outside the exchange zone.
The men’s 4x100-meter team in 2008 and 2012 and the women’s relay in 2004 and 2008 all failed to make it around the track successfully.
The men got off to a mediocre start on Thursday from Trayvon Bromell and the sloppy baton passing spelled doom, despite the United States’ unmatched depth in sprinting.
“I just didn’t do my job,” Bromell said after the race. He was the fastest man in the world coming into the Games but failed to make the final of the 100 meters as well.
The baton pass that felled the Americans came in the transfer between the second and third legs as Fred Kerley handed the stick to Ronnie Baker, but far too slowly. Both men were finalists in the 100 meters, with Kerley taking the silver in that race.
The result drew immediate criticism from the biggest name in American track and field.
“The U.S.A. team did everything wrong in the men’s relay,” Carl Lewis said on Twitter. “The passing system is wrong, athletes running the wrong legs, and it was clear that there was no leadership. It was a total embarrassment, and completely unacceptable for a U.S.A. team to look worse than the A.A.U. kids I saw.”
Minutes later, the U.S. disappointment continued, as Hansle Parchment of Jamaica upset the world champion Grant Holloway in the 110-meter high hurdles. Holloway had the lead early but could not hang on. Ronald Levy of Jamaica won the bronze, relegating Devon Allen of the United States to fourth.
The sprint relay, however, continues to be the mystery that the U.S. team cannot solve. It has not won a medal in the event since 2004, when the Americans took the silver medal. Not making the final of the race brings the frustration to a new level. Teams from China, Canada, Italy, Germany and Ghana all outran the Americans.
The United States won the event at the 2019 world championships, but that group included Justin Gatlin, who did not make the Olympic team, and Christian Coleman, who missed the Olympics because he is serving a drug suspension.
— Matthew Futterman and Evan Easterling
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The U.S. women’s soccer team beats Australia for the bronze medal.
KASHIMA, Japan — It could not, even at the end, even when they were nearly across the line, be easy. Not this year.
The United States women’s soccer team came to Japan in search of gold. It is the prize the team always expects, the one it always believes it deserves.
This time, though, the opponents were better, the connections weren’t there, and neither were the results. Until Thursday, when they needed one last win, one last stand, in the bronze medal game to make something out of what could have been nothing.
3
AUS flag
Australia
Women’s Bronze Medal Match
Final
4
USA flag
United States
Sam Kerr (17’)
Caitlin Foord (54’)
Emily Gielnik (90’)
Megan Rapinoe (8’)
Megan Rapinoe (21’)
Carli Lloyd (45’ +1)
Carli Lloyd (51’)
The medal arrived in due course, delivered with a 4-3 victory powered by two of the team’s oldest players, Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd, who both scored two goals in what might have been their final game in a major tournament.
“It’s obviously not the type of medal we wanted,” Rapinoe had said. But she made sure they got it anyway.
Image
The Americans had expected to win gold in this tournament, but they said they would play hard for bronze.
The Americans had expected to win gold in this tournament, but they said they would play hard for bronze.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Even at the end, it did not go easily. Australia proved to be a determined opponent and made the United States fight to the last minute, scoring twice in the final 40 minutes after falling behind by 4-1. The Americans even played the final four minutes with 10 players, out of substitutes and having watched Alex Morgan limp off after a collision.
But the job got done.
“You can’t win them all,” Lloyd had said after a semifinal defeat had ended her team’s hope for another Olympic championship. “This was my eighth tournament, and they’ve all had a different story line. They’ve all started and finished in a different fashion. Some have been pretty, some have been ugly, some we’ve just scraped by. This one we didn’t get by.”
— Andrew Das
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U.S. men’s basketball defeats Australia and heads to the gold medal game.
TOKYO — Once again, the U.S. men’s basketball team struggled in a first half against a tough opponent.
Once again, the Americans silenced doubts by finding their rhythm and pulling away for victory, this time in a semifinal match against Australia, winning 97-78 and heading to the gold medal game on Saturday (Friday night in the U.S.). They will play France, who they lost to in their opening game, to try to win their fourth consecutive gold medal.
Australia, ranked No. 3 in the world, led at the half, 45-42, but that was deceptive. The Americans, once in a 15-point hole, had already begun to rally and take permanent control in the second half.
Basketball: Men’s Semifinal
Final
T
AUS flag
Australia
24 21 10 23 78
USA flag
United States
18 24 32 23 97
They were backed by Kevin Durant’s 23 points and Devin Booker’s 20. Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday added 11 apiece.
Durant said people should not get too excited when opponents jump to an early lead and suggested the U.S. was just sizing things up against teams that typically have more experience playing together than the Americans have had.
“We knew Australia would come out fast and hit us with a nice punch,” he said. “We know that teams want to get us down early, see how we respond. A lot of these guys got continuity for years and years so they know how to play with each other. I feel like a lot of teams are expecting us to fold early.
“We stuck with it,’’ he added, “stuck with our principles, made a couple of switches on defense, and we were able to get some momentum going into the half. Guys came out with that intensity, making shots as well.”
Australia’s aggressive three-point shooting cooled — Patty Mills led their scoring with 15 points and five rebounds — while the U.S. stepped up on defense.
“They’ve got a lot of firepower so we knew that if we gave them an inch, they would be able to take a mile,’’ said Australia’s Matisse Thybulle. “I think we played well, played hard for the majority of the game but they don’t need much to get going.”
Jock Landale said Australia had no answer when momentum shifted.
“They figure out what you’re doing and they just find ways to exploit it,’’ he said. “I think we started turning the ball over in that third quarter and they were just living in transition. And that’s tough to beat.”
The U.S. is now 9-0 against Australia in the Olympics.
Australia can still end up with its first-ever Olympic medal in basketball, playing in the bronze medal game Saturday against Slovenia, who lost in the other semifinal against France. They lost the bronze medal game by a point to Spain at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.
The U.S. team, ranked No. 1 in the world, made it to the semifinal after defeating Spain on Tuesday, 95-81, despite a similarly sluggish start.
The Americans are trying to rewrite their story line from curiously questionable team to strong finisher, if not gold medalist.
And Durant said he is confident that will be the result, as long as the Americans continue to regroup on defense.
“I’m looking forward to going out there and executing the game plan on defense,” he said. “Offensively we’re not worried about that, but going out there and executing the game plan defensively as a team, and we’ll see what happens.”
After two exhibition losses before the start of the Games, including to Australia, the United States started its Olympic campaign with their loss to France. The Americans mostly cruised through their next two contests — against far weaker opponents, Iran and the Czech Republic — and had some time to establish some rhythm as a group.
— Randal C. Archibold
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The U.S. baseball team will play Japan in the gold medal game.
By advancing to the final game, the United States is guaranteed a medal.
By advancing to the final game, the United States is guaranteed a medal.Credit...Koji Watanabe/Getty Images
YOKOHAMA, Japan — The Olympic gold medal in baseball, a sport absent from the Summer Games for 13 years, will come down to the two biggest baseball countries in the world: Japan and the United States.
In a semifinal at Yokohama Baseball Stadium on Thursday, the United States topped South Korea, 7-2, behind another strong all-around performance from a roster of veteran players and young prospects. Joe Ryan, a right-handed starter, allowed one run over four and one-third innings. Four relievers, led by Anthony Gose, combined to allow just one more run the rest of the way.
All tournament long, it has felt like a collision course between top-ranked Japan, which has never won a gold medal in Olympic baseball, and the United States, which won its only one in 2000. The United States’ only blemish so far at the Tokyo Games is a 7-6 loss in 10 innings to Japan on Monday.
Because of that defeat, the United States had to beat the Dominican Republic and South Korea to advance to the gold medal game. Japan simply had to beat South Korea, which it did on Wednesday.
On Thursday, leading 2-1, the United States exploded for a five-run sixth inning that put the game out of reach. Mark Kolozsvary, Jack Lopez and Eddy Alvarez each drove in a run, while Tyler Austin capped the offensive outburst with a two-run single.
After the game, United States third baseman Todd Frazier said he told his teammates to get a good night’s sleep and that on Saturday, “You’re going to play in the best game of your life.”
By advancing to the final game, the United States is guaranteed a medal, and so is Alvarez, the team’s starting second baseman. That means Alvarez, 31, will become the sixth person — third American — to win a medal in both the Winter and Summer Olympics. At the Sochi Games in 2014, Alvarez won a silver medal as part of the United States’ 5,000-meter relay team in short-track speedskating.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said after Thursday’s game. “But the job’s not done yet.”
After the final out on Thursday, Alvarez sat in the dugout with his head down and cried. Afterward, he explained that he had been thinking about his path from his hometown, Miami, where his family ended up after fleeing Cuba, to becoming a two-time Olympian and a major league player with the Marlins last year.
“I started this journey since I was 6 years old,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to take me to being a major-league baseball player. I never thought I would ever make it to the Olympics in baseball. I owe a lot to my family and the generations that have sacrificed a lot of their time to move from a different country and that ended up giving me opportunities. I got emotional because this is much more than my accomplishments.”
South Korea, which won a gold medal the last time baseball was played in the Olympics in 2008, will face the Dominican Republic on Saturday afternoon for the bronze medal game.
— James Wagner
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/04/sports/olympics-results-tokyo-medals?
Olympics Updates: U.S. Baseball Will Play Japan for Gold; U.S. Women’s Soccer Wins Bronze
Published Aug. 4, 2021
Updated Aug. 5, 2021, 4:14 p.m. ET
The U.S. men’s basketball team beat Australia and will play for the gold medal. Nevin Harrison of the U.S. took gold in canoe sprint.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/04/sports/olympics-results-tokyo-medals?name=styln-olympics®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false
Bryson DeChambeau has no regrets over being unvaccinated prior to Tokyo Olympics
https://sports.yahoo.com/bryson-de-chambeau-has-no-regrets-over-missing-olympics-because-he-was-not-vaccinated-221958367.html
This guy is a real genius.
Best photos of the Tokyo Olympics
Washington Post Staff · Photography · Aug 5, 2021
Athletes compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/best-photos-of-tokyo-olympics/
Tokyo logs record 5,042 cases as infections surge amid Games
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
an hour ago
TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo reported 5,042 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, its most since the pandemic began as infections surge in the Japanese capital hosting the Olympics.
Tokyo has been under a state of emergency since mid-July, and four other areas of the country have since been added. But the measures, basically shorter opening hours and a ban on alcohol for restaurants and bars, are increasingly ignored by the public, which has become tired of restrictions.
“We need to tackle the situation now that we have a stronger sense of urgency,” Prime Minister Yosihide Suga told reporters, referring to Tokyo exceeding 5,000 new daily cases for the first time. “The infections are expanding at a pace we have never experienced before.”
Suga, who has been criticized for insisting on hosting the Olympics despite the coronavirus’s surge, says there is no evidence linking the increase in cases to the July 23-Aug. 8 Games. He urged people to firmly stick to the emergency requests and stay at home during summer vacation.
Japan's daily COVID-19 cases
See Graphics:
https://apnews.com/article/2020-tokyo-olympics-lifestyle-sports-coronavirus-pandemic-business-0b250f40128b0892863bc55067a4ba39
The new cases brought Tokyo’s reported total to 236,138. The entire country registered more than 14,000 new cases on Wednesday, for a 970,460 total.
Alarmed by the pace of the spread, some experts have called for the state of emergency to be expanded nationwide.
Instead, Suga on Thursday announced a milder version of the emergency measures in eight prefectures, including Fukushima in the east and Kumamoto in the south, beginning Monday. The less-stringent measures allow prefectural heads to target specific towns but do not allow them to order business closures.
Suga also pledged to “prevent the further spread of the virus by firmly carrying out vaccinations.”
Experts say people are not cooperating because many feel less of a sense of urgency about the pandemic while the Olympics are going ahead and the government’s repeats of the same requests for people to stay at home.
Experts on a Tokyo metropolitan government panel cautioned that infections propelled by the more contagious delta variant have become “explosive” and could exceed 10,000 cases a day in two weeks.
Measures targeting business owners begin with requests and increase to orders, and violators can be fined, though this rarely happens. Those who comply can receive compensation, but thousands of eateries still stay open after the requested 8 p.m. closing time. Measures for the general public are only voluntary requests, including staying at home, wearing a mask outside and avoiding nonessential trips.
Japan has managed to keep its cases and deaths lower than much of the world, but testing is still insufficient and Tokyo’s positivity rate stands at 20%, indicating widespread infections. Japan has 8.9 new confirmed cases per 100,000, compared to 8.5 in Vietnam and 28.4 in the United States.
In Tokyo, nearly 17,000 patients with mild symptoms are currently isolating at home — more than a tenfold increase from a month ago — and more than 10,000 others are waiting for beds in hospitals or special hotels.
As hospital beds fill, Suga’s government introduced a new policy this week in which coronavirus patients with moderate symptoms will isolate at home instead of in hospitals, an attempt to save hospital beds almost exclusively for seriously ill patients.
Opposition lawmakers criticized Suga for not increasing hospital capacity sufficiently despite warnings about the delta variant. Coronavirus treatment in Japan is limited to public and university hospitals that have adequate facilities and expertise.
Dr. Masataka Inokuchi, the vice chair of the Tokyo Medical Association, said he hopes to establish a system that allows patients to isolate safely at home. “This system, however, will collapse if the number of patients at home keeps rising,” he said.
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