Allyson Felix Wins 10th Track Medal, Jamaican Women Win 4×100 Relay
Here’s what you need to know:
Here’s what happened in Tokyo on Friday.
Allyson Felix wins her 10th Olympic medal, tying an American record in her sport.
Jamaica wins the women’s 4×100-meter relay easily, while Italy stuns the men’s field.
Canada beats Sweden in a shootout for the women’s soccer gold medal.
Janja Garnbret of Slovenia wins in women’s sport climbing.
Faith Kipyegon of Kenya wins the 1,500 meters.
U.S. women’s basketball rolls past Serbia and will play in the gold medal game.
April Ross and Alix Klineman of the U.S. win their first Olympic gold in beach volleyball.
Here’s what happened in Tokyo on Friday.
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TOKYO — On the track Friday night, Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas powered away from the field in the 400 meters, while Allyson Felix, in third place, won a record 10th Olympic medal.
In the men’s 4×100 relay, Italy ran down Britain in the last stride to win. In the women’s race, the Jamaican team, with all three medalists from the 100 meters, outran the U.S. for the gold.
In the women’s 1,500, Faith Kipyegon of Kenya foiled Sifan Hassan’s bid for a 1,500-5,000-10,000 triple; Hassan finished third. Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda won a physical men’s 5,000 with the American Paul Chelimo in third.
Alix Klineman and April Ross of the United States won the gold medal in beach volleyball, giving Ross a full set of medals in the event.
The U.S. women’s volleyball and basketball teams both rolled past Serbia in semifinal matches. Final volleyball score: 3-0. Final basketball score: 79-59.
Gable Steveson of the U.S. won the heaviest weight class in freestyle wrestling, upending Geno Petriashvili of Georgia with a takedown with only seconds to go.
Canada defeated Sweden in a shootout for its first gold in women’s soccer.
—
Victor Mather
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.
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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 4×400 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.
Track and Field: Women’s 400m Final ›
Reaction
Time
Gold
Shaunae Miller-Uibo
Bahamas
0.162
48.36
Silver
Marileidy Paulino
Dominican Republic
0.176
49.20
Bronze
Allyson Felix
United States
0.158
49.46
4
Stephenie Ann McPherson
Jamaica
0.131
49.61
5
Candice McLeod
Jamaica
0.152
49.87
6
Jodie Williams
Britain
0.127
49.97
7
Quanera Hayes
United States
0.176
50.88
Roxana Gomez
Cuba
DNF
DNF
She came to these Games as an athlete 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 4×400 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.
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Talya Minsberg
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Jamaica wins the women’s 4×100-meter relay easily, while Italy stuns the men’s field.
Jamaica’s closest competition came from the United States, the defending gold medalists in the race and always a formidable foe.
Credit…
Doug Mills/The New York Times
The Jamaican women put an exclamation point on their domination of Olympic sprinting Friday night, winning the women’s 4×100 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.
Track and Field: Women’s 4×100m Relay ›
Gold
Jamaica
Silver
United States
Bronze
Britain
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.
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.
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Matthew Futterman
Canada beats Sweden in a shootout for the women’s soccer gold medal.
Canada’s Julia Grosso scoring against Sweden on Friday.
Credit…
Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images
Canada, a relentless team with an aging star, a sturdy defense and a taste for more after consecutive bronze medals, won its first gold medal in women’s soccer on Friday by defeating Sweden in a penalty shootout, 3-2, after a 1-1 tie in Yokohama.
Julia Grosso clinched Canada’s victory by converting her team’s sixth attempt in a shootout that featured more misses (seven) than makes (five). When her shot went in off Sweden goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl, her teammates raced forward off the midfield line where they had been watching and buried her in a pile of red at the top of the penalty area.
“I honestly cannot even believe what just happened,” said Sinclair, Canada’s 38-year-old striker and captain. “For the last 40 days, we had a goal to come in here and change the color of the medal and we landed on top of the podium.”
Sweden’s players, who had taken an early lead on a goal by Stina Blackstenius in the 34th minute and created far more chances to score in regulation and extra time, collapsed to the turf, some of them in tears, after the shootout. Sweden, which had won all of its games in Japan until Friday, lost in the final for the second straight Olympics.
“I am trying to not feel it, wake up from this bad dream,” Lindahl said. “Congratulations to Canada, they defended well. That was our gold to lose.”
Canada had been the bronze medalist in the past two Olympic tournaments, but advanced to the final for the first time by beating its neighbor and nemesis, the United States, in the semifinals on Monday.
Trailing at halftime, Canada had tied the score in the 67th minute on a penalty kick by midfielder Jessie Fleming, awarded after a video review confirmed that Sweden defender Amanda Ilestedt had fouled Sinclair.
1
Sweden
Women’s Gold Medal Match
Canada wins 3-2 in shootout
1
Canada
Stina Blackstenius (34’)
Jessie Fleming (67’, penalty)
Kosovare Asllani
Nathalie Bjorn
Olivia Schough
Anna Anvegard
Caroline Seger
Jonna Andersson
Jessie Fleming
Ashley Lawrence
Vanessa Gilles
Adriana Leon
Deanne Rose
Julia Grosso
Sweden pressed hard for the winner before the final whistle and again in extra time, and it even had a chance to win the gold in the shootout, but Caroline Seger shot over the crossbar on her team’s fifth attempt.
That opened the door for Canada, and after Deanne Rose scored and Stephanie Labbe made a save, Grosso strode to the spot and scored the winner.
Fleming’s penalty kick in the second half was her second critical goal for Canada this week; she had also scored a penalty kick for the only goal in a 1-0 victory over the United States in the semifinals. The United States went on to beat Australia for the bronze.
Canada’s victory over Sweden delivered the first major international championship for Sinclair, one of her country’s most decorated and celebrated athletes. But the Olympic title also means that Quinn, who started the final, became the first openly transgender and nonbinary athlete to win an Olympic medal.
In the men’s competition, Mexico beat host Japan, 3-1, to win the bronze medal. Brazil and Spain will meet in the men’s gold medal match on Saturday.
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Andrew Das
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Janja Garnbret of Slovenia wins in women’s sport climbing.
Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret won gold in sport climbing on Friday.
Credit…
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Even before the final scores were calculated, Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret, the best female sport climber in recent years, dropped her head into her hands and shed tears.
She came into the Tokyo Games as the favorite to win the women’s sport climbing event in its Olympic debut, and said she had felt immense pressure to win. And even under all that stress, she did.
Climbers from Japan joined her on the medals podium: Miho Nonaka won the silver medal and Akiyo Noguchi won the bronze.
Sport Climbing: Women’s Combined ›
Speed
Bouldering
Lead
Points
Gold
Janja Garnbret
Slovenia
5
1
1
5
Silver
Miho Nonaka
Japan
3
3
5
45
Bronze
Akiyo Noguchi
Japan
4
4
4
64
4
Aleksandra Miroslaw
Poland
1
8
8
64
5
Brooke Raboutou
United States
7
2
6
84
6
Anouck Jaubert
France
2
6
7
84
7
Jessica Pilz
Austria
6
5
3
90
8
Seo Chaehyun
South Korea
8
7
2
112
“This was the hardest competition of my entire career,” Garnbret said. “It was definitely super hard, especially mentally hard.”
In front of no paying spectators, with music pulsing throughout the outdoor arena and the announcer encouraging climbers by saying, “C’mon, push it!” and “Bring it on!” Garnbret pulled herself up walls of fake boulders and man-made rocks farther than her competition on Saturday.
Garnbret finished first in two of the three climbing disciplines that were combined into one Olympic event. In speed climbing, the first of the three climbing segments in the final, the competitors sprint to the top of a wall, using memory and sheer power. She finished fifth to set up the rest of her night.
“From then on it was actually easier,” she said.
She then finished first in bouldering, which requires climbers to problem solve as they ascend multiple climbing walls without a rope, and she reached the top of two of the three walls. None of her seven competitors could even get to the top of one.
At times hanging on only by her red, chalk-covered fingernails, Garnbret, 22, also was No. 1 in lead, the segment in which competitors use a rope to see how far they can climb up a technical wall given a set amount of time.
As she and the other medalists stood on the podium, the biggest cheers came when the Japanese climbers were announced. Not only did the volunteers in the stands applaud Nonaka and Noguchi, but groups of fans who had gathered on one big walkway next to the arena also leapt up and down in exhilaration. Those fans were warned not to stop and watch the event, even from afar, by volunteers holding up signs that told them to keep walking. Yet they stayed.
One man had dressed up as Mount Fuji and wrapped himself in a Japanese flag. Others raised their cellphones to take videos and photos of the climbers, who were just specks in the distance as they scaled the different walls.
At the end of the night, those fans might have recognized Garnbret. She was the climber who finished at the top.
—
Juliet Macur
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.
Track and Field: Women’s 1,500m ›
Gold
Faith Kipyegon
Kenya
Silver
Laura Muir
Britain
Bronze
Sifan Hassan
Netherlands
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.
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Scott Cacciola
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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
Serbia
12
11
16
20
59
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.
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
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
Australia
–
United States
–
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
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Victor Mather
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Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda wins the men’s 5,000 meters.
Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda won gold in the men’s 5,000 meters.
Credit…
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda took the gold medal in the men’s 5,000, surviving a physical and tactical race to hold off Mohammed Ahmed of Canada and Paul Chelimo of the United States.
Cheptegei established himself as the top distance runner in the world in 2020, rewriting the record book for the 5,000 and 10,000.
Cheptegei took his time in taking control of the race on a heavy night at the National Stadium. He was in the middle of the pack halfway through as the runners took turns keeping the race honest from the front.
As the race moved toward its climax, it became distance running as contact sport. There were elbows and knees and heels clanging together as the leaders battled for position.
Chelimo, a 30-year-old American, moved to the front with three laps to go before giving way to Nicholas Kimeli of Kenya.
But as the bell sounded, Cheptegei did what he was expected to do, moving to the front and opening up just enough of a gap on the back stretch to make it a race for second and third place. Ahmed came on strong in the final 100 meters with Chelimo outstretching Kimeli in the final 5 meters and falling over the finish line to take the bronze.
—
Matthew Futterman
Biting your own medal is one thing. A Japanese mayor learned you don’t bite someone else’s.
Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya bit the gold medal of the Japanese softball player Miu Goto during a ceremony on Wednesday.
Credit…
Kyodo, via Reuters
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 she would have cried and “wouldn’t be able to recover for a while.”
Correction:
Aug. 10, 2021
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to a speedskater who won gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Nao Kodaira is a woman.
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Daniel Victor
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Hisako Ueno
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Will climate change make summers too hot for a safe Summer Games?
Beach vollleyball players Anouk Vergé-Dépré and Joana Heidrich of Switzerland.
Credit…
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Triathlon athletes collapsing in near 90-degree heat. A tennis star, sweating profusely, telling an umpire that he might die.
As average temperatures rise across the globe, scientists warn, more cities will struggle — as Tokyo has — to host the Olympics in the summer months. Paris, the host of the 2024 Summer Games, has been hit with deadly heat waves in recent years. Los Angeles is set to host the 2028 games during the peak of wildfire season.
One analysis published in the Lancet medical journal in 2016 gives a glimpse of the future. A team of researchers predicted that by 2085, under a worst-case emissions scenario, where emissions of greenhouse gases aren’t brought under control in coming decades, just 33 of 645 major cities in the Northern Hemisphere would be able to host the Olympics in July and August in a climate safe for athletes. Most of those cities were in Western Europe; only two were in Asia.
Tord Kjellstrom, an environmental and occupational health scientist, who handled the team’s data analysis, ran the same analysis for The New York Times using a more moderate emissions scenario — one that assumes the nations of the world will take enough action to stabilize planet-warming emissions shortly after 2100. He still found that only 41 cities, fewer than one in 10 of major cities in the Northern Hemisphere, would be able to safely host.
“Everywhere you look, temperatures are trending up,” he said. “So it’s crazy. It’s a very bad plan to keep holding these Olympic Games during the hottest period of the year.”
The researchers made a number of assumptions. They used a measure of heat stress, known as the wet-bulb globe temperature, or WBGT, a combination of temperature, humidity, heat radiation and wind. They focused on the marathon as the most demanding endurance event, and used a WBGT of 26 degrees Celsius, or about 79 degrees Fahrenheit, as a low-risk limit for the event. They also examined an “extreme risk” scenario of WBGT at 82 degrees Fahrenheit.
They examined cities with a population of more than 600,000, the lower limit among Olympic host cities in the postwar period. And they excluded the Southern Hemisphere, where July and August tend to be cooler; Brisbane is set to host the 2032 Summer Games, starting in July — the city’s coldest month of the year. (Of course, many cities in the Southern Hemisphere face increasingly extreme heat and humidity during their own summer months.)
Jennifer Vanos, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who has studied the effects of extreme heat on athletes, cautioned that long-term predictions were challenging, and pointed to recent research that has started to show that worst-case scenarios are unlikely. Moreover, the risks posed by heat and humidity varied by sport, she said. (Athletes in some events, like short sprints, may even benefit from the heat.)
Still, “most places that are going to hold Summer Olympics are going to have to prepare for heat,” she said. “And if a host city is going to be potentially dangerously hot, or going to be dealing with something like wildfires, we have to be willing to move it.”
Summer heat has added a new dimension to the Olympics’ climate concerns. Summer heat was a concern as far back as the Atlanta Games in 1996, but more recently the concerns have generally focused on the Winter Games affected by warming temperatures and lack of snow.
Tokyo organizers have come under fire for claiming in their winning bid that Tokyo had “many days of mild and sunny weather” in summer that were “an ideal climate for athletes to perform at their best.”
“I think a lot of people feel misled,” said Shuhei Nomura, an associate professor of health policy and management at Keio University. Still, Tokyo most likely avoided a wider debacle by banning most spectators, he said, saving crowds from having to swelter in the heat. “We would have been in big trouble.”
Of course, the International Olympic Committee could move the Games to cooler months. But ever since the Sydney Games were staged in late September to disappointing viewership, the Olympic committee has required that candidate cities schedule the Summer Games between July 15 and Aug. 31, barring “exceptional circumstances.”
Moving outdoor endurance events to cooler locations — as Tokyo organizers did with the marathon races taking place this weekend in the northern city of Sapporo — could also become necessary, experts say. Relocating could help athletes escape the heat trapped by concrete buildings and city streets, a phenomenon known as the heat island effect.
“One of the points we’ve made to the I.O.C. is that they should really strengthen the climate requirements for the cities that bid for the Games,” said Daniel Scott, professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo.
“There are just risks everywhere, especially in that mid-July to mid-August stretch.”
Correction:
Aug. 6, 2021
An earlier version of this article misstated the year Paris had its hottest day on record. It was in July 2019, not this July.
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Hiroko Tabuchi
50-kilometer racewalking strides off the Olympic stage.
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.
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.
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Ken Belson
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The Qatari Olympic team (like much else) is mostly imported.
“They helped me follow my dream,” Abderrahman Samba, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, said of Qatar, his adopted country.
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Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
TOKYO — There is a lot of sand in Qatar but not a lot of beach parties. At least, not the kind of revelry that tends to draw beach volleyball players, in their bikinis and short shorts.
A lack of tradition, though, has not stopped Qatar from assembling a top-flight beach volleyball team. On Saturday, Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan will fight for bronze in the Olympic men’s beach volleyball competition, having defeated Italy, the 2016 silver medalists, along the way.
“Everyone now knows Qatar in beach volleyball,” Mr. Younousse said. “It’s on the map.”
Armed with cash, coaches and state-of-the-art training facilities, Qatar has been trying to assemble an athletic force worthy of the host of the 2022 soccer World Cup, not to mention other high-profile sporting events that the small Gulf state is eager to attract.
In Tokyo, Qatar has fielded 16 competitors — 13 men and three women — most of whom were drafted from other countries. They include athletes originally from Mauritania, Egypt, Sudan and Morocco. To represent Qatar, where Arabic names are common, many have shed their original names for purposes of competition. But they earn salaries and opportunities that would be impossible in their countries of origin.
“We are one of the best countries to support sports, the government supporting us to achieve things,” said Abderrahman Samba, a 400-meter hurdler who placed fifth in the finals in Tokyo. “I don’t think I can tell you now all the support, it will take days to tell.”
Mr. Samba grew up in Saudi Arabia but ran for Mauritania, his parents’ homeland, before turning up as a Qatari competitor in 2016, about a year after moving there.
“They helped me follow my dream,” he said. “They give me everything.”
Tariq Panja contributed reporting.
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Hannah Beech
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.
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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 4×400-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.
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Tariq Panja
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An I.O.C. expert says the Games showed how to ‘keep the pandemic at bay.’
Officials say that Tokyo’s expansive testing regimen for athletes and others, combined with mask-wearing and social distancing, kept the Games “safe and secure.”
Credit…
Doug Mills/The New York Times
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.”
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
July 26
Jean-Julien Rojer
Tennis
Netherlands
July 25
Samy Colman
Equestrian
Morocco
Jon Rahm
Golf
Spain
Djamel Sedjati
Track and field
Algeria
Bilal Tabti
Track and field
Algeria
July 24
Bryson DeChambeau
Golf
United States
July 23
Finn Florijn
Rowing
Netherlands
Jelle Geens
Triathlon
Belgium
Simon Geschke
Road cycling
Germany
Frederico Morais
Surfing
Portugal
July 22
Taylor Crabb
Beach volleyball
United States
Reshmie Oogink
Taekwondo
Netherlands
Michal Schlegel
Road cycling
Czech Republic
Marketa Slukova
Beach volleyball
Czech Republic
July 21
Fernanda Aguirre
Taekwondo
Chile
Ilya Borodin
Swimming
Russian Olympic Committee
Amber Hill
Shooting
Britain
Candy Jacobs
Skateboarding
Netherlands
Youcef Reguigui
Road cycling
Algeria
Pavel Sirucek
Table tennis
Czech Republic
July 20
Sammy Solís
Baseball
Mexico
Sonja Vasic
Basketball
Serbia
Hector Velazquez
Baseball
Mexico
July 19
Kara Eaker
Gymnastics
United States
Ondrej Perusic
Beach volleyball
Czech Republic
Katie Lou Samuelson
Three-on-three basketball
United States
July 18
Coco Gauff
Tennis
United States
Kamohelo Mahlatsi
Soccer
South Africa
Thabiso Monyane
Soccer
South Africa
July 16
Dan Craven
Road cycling
Namibia
Alex de Minaur
Tennis
Australia
July 14
Dan Evans
Tennis
Britain
July 13
Johanna Konta
Tennis
Britain
July 3
Milos Vasic
Rowing
Serbia
July 2
Hideki Matsuyama
Golf
Japan
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.
Japan Coronavirus Map and Case Count
See the latest charts and maps of coronavirus cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations in Japan.
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 as a whole have 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.”
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Shashank Bengali
NBC’s coverage has suffered low ratings and advertiser complaints during the pandemic.
The U.S. team entered a mostly empty Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony.
Credit…
Doug Mills/The New York Times
In NBCUniversal’s stewardship of the Tokyo Olympics broadcast, the coronavirus pandemic has been the greatest challenge for the company, which paid more than $1 billion to run 7,000 hours of Games coverage across two broadcast networks, six cable channels and a fledgling streaming platform, Peacock.
The ratings have been a disappointment, averaging 16.8 million viewers a night through Tuesday, a steep drop from the 29 million who tuned in through the same day of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. NBCUniversal has offered to make up for the smaller-than-expected television audience by offering free ads to some companies that bought commercial time during the Games, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations.
The opening ceremony set a downbeat tone. Instead of the usual pageant of athletes smiling and waving to the crowd, there was a procession of participants walking through a mostly empty Tokyo Olympic Stadium, all wearing masks to protect against the spread of Covid-19 as a new variant raged. The live morning broadcast and prime-time replay drew the lowest ratings for an opening ceremony in 33 years, with just under 17 million viewers. The high came Sunday, July 25, when a little more than 20 million people tuned in.
The absence or early exits of popular athletes from some events, including the gymnast Simone Biles, the runner Sha’Carri Richardson, the tennis champion Naomi Osaka and the basketball star LeBron James, further dimmed expectations. And in a constant reminder of the coronavirus, on-air correspondents have been masked as they keep their distance from athletes.
“We turn to the Olympics as an escape, as this fun, uplifting experience, and certainly there have been moments like that,” said Jen Chaney, a television critic for Vulture. “But more than anything, watching this year has shown the wounds that we’re dealing with.”
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Tiffany Hsu
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Day 15 in Tokyo: Gold medal games for the U.S. in baseball, men’s basketball and women’s water polo.
The track docket includes both 4×400-meter relays, which are always a highlight, plus the men’s 1,500 meters (the metric mile) and the women’s 10,000 meters and high jump.
Credit…
James Hill for The New York Times
Saturday is a huge day at the Olympics, probably the biggest of the Games. How’s this for a lineup?
The U.S. men’s basketball team captured the gold medal by defeating France, the team it lost to earlier in the competition.
In baseball, the United States will try to earn only its second gold in the sport when it faces Japan, the only team it has lost to in this Olympics, at 6 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.
The track docket includes both 4×400-meter relays, always a highlight, plus the men’s 1,500 meters (the metric mile) and the women’s 10,000 meters and high jump. Those events all begin in the Tokyo evening, U.S. morning.
Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya won the women’s marathon on Saturday morning in Sapporo, Japan. Molly Seidel of the United States, running only her third marathon, won a surprise bronze.
Also on Saturday, the U.S. women’s water polo team faces off against Spain for gold.
Women’s golf finishes, with Nelly Korda of the United States in the mix for a gold medal. And team events in artistic swimming and rhythmic gymnastics begin in the Tokyo afternoon and evening.
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Victor Mather
Karate gets its own showcase at the Tokyo Games.
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Karate made its debut as an official Olympic sport at the Tokyo Games this week as 120 men and women from around the world vied for medals.
The Japanese organizers successfully lobbied for karate to be included as a medal sport, an upgrade from the cameo it made as a demonstration sport at the 1964 Tokyo Games.
Two-thirds of the athletes are competing in the kumite portion of the program, where two fighters face off and try to hit and kick their opponents to score points.
The other third will compete in kata, which includes the building blocks of karate performed against an imaginary opponent, traditional aspects of the martial art that purists relish.
Unfortunately for karate fans, karate will not be included in the Paris Games in 2024. But at least for a few days, it will share the biggest stage in global sports.
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Ken Belson
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A British BMX racer’s historic gold required a little financial help from her friends.
Bethany Shriever, left, and Kye Whyte celebrated after winning gold and silver in their Olympic events.
Credit…
Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Bethany Shriever secured the gold medal in the women’s BMX racing final, it was in an event in which she was not even projected to be a finalist. The win last week was Britain’s first Olympic gold in the event.
But it wasn’t just that Shriever, who was racing against the two-time defending Olympic champion Mariana Pajon of Colombia, was an unlikely contender to make the final, let alone claim gold. It’s that without some help from a GoFundMe page she set up in 2017, Shriever might not have even made it to Tokyo.
“The chances would be very, very, slim,” she said.
Shriever, 22, grew up participating in the British Cycling program, honing her skills in a sport where she was often the only girl at the track — something she took note of almost instantly, she said.
“I would just be training with boys pretty much,” she said. The number of competitors participating in boys’ races, particularly as she joined bigger events, always greatly outnumbered those in the girls’ races.
Shriever’s breakout moment came when she captured the junior world title at the 2017 UCI BMX World Championships in Rock Hill, S. C. But within months, Shriever was questioning her future in BMX. In a budget review after the 2016 Rio Games, UK Sport, the government body that invests in Olympic and Paralympic sports in Britain, cut funding to the women’s BMX program and announced it would finance only the men’s program in its journey to Tokyo.
“It was questioning things like, ‘Why haven’t we got the same chances as the men?’” Shriever recalled feeling at the time. “I wanted to get to the top and be able to earn a living from doing this.”
So Shriever decided to stay home in Essex with her family and take a second job as a teaching assistant helping children. She worked three days a week, and headed straight to the track or the gym afterward. “There were nights when I couldn’t put everything into training because I was just so knackered from work,” she said, adding that her employer was flexible with her schedule, giving her half days or allowing her time off for competitions. Her parents ferried her to races.
As the Olympic cycle began in 2019, Shriever knew that to earn enough points to get to Tokyo, she needed a better solution. She calculated what it might cost to hire a coach and to compete in various races before setting up a GoFundMe page for 50,000 pounds, or just about $70,000. She managed to raise nearly 20,000 pounds, which she said was used up almost immediately because of two events in Australia.
“That decision opened a lot of eyes that I did need help and I did have the potential to compete in the Games,” she said about launching a GoFundMe.
By midsummer 2019, Shriever had rejoined the British Cycling program. She did so with the help of a coach from British Cycling and a push by the program to get UK Sport to reinvest in disciplines whose budgets had been cut.
Shriever won all three of her heats in Tokyo and then the final, screaming on her bike as she crossed the finish line. In two weeks, Shriever will be competing for another first-place finish at the 2021 UCI BMX World Championships in Papendal, Holland.
Shriever is still the only woman on her six-member racing team, which includes Kye Whyte, who won the silver medal in the men’s event and was cheering from the sidelines as she made history. In addition to Shriever’s and Whyte’s medals, Charlotte Worthington won gold in the BMX women’s freestyle, an event that made its debut in Tokyo.
Women have come a long way in BMX, Shriever said, with more getting involved despite the obstacles they have to overcome to get the same opportunities as men. There is still work to do, she said, but she feels hopeful about the future.
“We are going in the right direction, for sure,” Shriever said.
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Alexandra E. Petri
U.S. broadcast coverage on Friday night includes beach volleyball, kayaking finals and basketball.
The U.S. team competed against Australia in women’s beach volleyball.
Credit…
Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
All times are in Eastern.
TRACK AND FIELD The women’s marathon will air at 8 p.m. on NBC. Fans can also catch the women’s 400-meter final, which concluded with Allyson Felix taking the bronze, her 10th Olympic medal. Event coverage also includes the men’s and women’s 4×100-meter relay finals, the women’s 1,500-meter final and the men’s 5,000-meter final.
DIVING The men’s 10-meter platform semifinal will air at 8:30 p.m., and the final at 2 a.m., on NBC.
CANOE/KAYAK Catch the semifinals in the men’s and women’s kayak four 500-meter events, followed by the men’s canoe single 1,000-meter and women’s canoe double 500-meter from the Sea Forest Waterway. Heats kick off at 8:30 p.m. on USA Network, and all conclude with the finals starting at 10:30 p.m.
BASKETBALL At 10:30 p.m., Kevin Durant and the U.S. men’s team will play France for the gold medal. The game will air live on NBC.
BEACH VOLLEYBALL The undefeated duo April Ross and Alix Klineman won their first Olympic gold in this match against Australia, which is re-airing at 10:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Network.
SOCCER Canada’s women’s soccer team grabs its first Olympic gold in a final with Sweden; a replay of the match airs at 11:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Network.
BASEBALL In another medal matchup, South Korea takes on the Dominican Republic for the bronze medal. The game begins at 11 p.m. on CNBC. (The U.S. and Japan face off in a gold medal game airing at 6 a.m. on NBC Sports Network.)
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Alexandra E. Petri
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The U.S. women’s indoor volleyball team will play for gold.
The Americans celebrated their victory over Serbia on Friday, in a rematch of a semifinal it lost at the 2016 Games.
Credit…
Manu Fernandez/Associated Press
Facing a tough Serbian team in the women’s volleyball semifinal, the United States won in straight sets to earn a spot in the gold medal game.
The win — by 25-19, 25-15, 25-23 — brought both joy and relief for the Americans, who lost to the Serbs five years ago in the semifinal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. That loss hurt because the U.S. team had been doing so well at those Olympics, with the gold medal within reach.
Women’s Semifinal
Final
Serbia
19
15
23
United States
25
25
25
Karch Kiraly, the U.S. team’s coach, said it was “an absolute soul crusher” to lose in that semifinal match because it was the Americans’ only defeat in Rio and was so close: It came down to the fifth set, with the Serbs winning, 15-13.
The team in Tokyo now will have a chance to redeem itself from that loss when it plays Brazil in the gold medal match on Sunday. The United States will be ready for anything, and any team, Kiraly said, partly because throughout the coronavirus pandemic it has spent so much time working on team chemistry.
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Juliet Macur