The dignitaries are still a major part of the festivities: U.S. first lady Jill Biden appeared Saturday at the three-on-three basketball venue to cheer on the American team against France.
Follow along for live updates from the Games.
Szilágyi makes fencing history, Sun Yiwen denies it
You’d be forgiven for thinking Hugues Obry won his first Olympic gold medal when he raised his arms, ran around the piste and whooped at the conclusion of the women’s individual épée event. The French coach lifted the real winner, Chinese fencer Sun Yiwen, over his shoulder shortly after she jabbed top-ranked Romanian Ana Maria Popescu in the right rib to earn gold in overtime.
Yiwen, who won bronze in the individual and silver in the team event in Rio, denied the 36-year old Popescu from becoming the oldest gold medalist in women’s épée fencing history.
Afterward, Hungarian Áron Szilágyi dominated Italian Luigi Samele in the men’s individual sabre, becoming the first man to win three Olympic gold medals in a single discipline. Szilágyi, 31, has won the event at the last three Olympic Games.
Team USA without a medal on opening day
Team USA will finish the opening day of Olympic competition without a medal for first time since 1972.
The United States came away empty-handed after a few close losses. American Eli Dershwitz, the world’s No. 2-ranked fencer in men’s sabre, fell to eventual bronze-medalist Kim Jung-hwan of South Korea. Jourdan Delacruz, a 23-year-old weightlifter from north Texas, slipped from medal contention after she could not convert her final three lifts in the women’s 49-kg division.
U.S. men’s gymnastics qualifies for team final in fourth
TOKYO — The U.S. men’s gymnastics team opened competition with a solid performance in the qualification round, advancing to the team final in fourth place.
After a shaky start that included a fall on the opening routine, Team USA delivered an exceptional floor rotation, earning the top team score of the day on that apparatus, and then held steady through pommel horse, which can also cause trouble, especially if gymnasts are nervy. Brody Malone (85.298) and Sam Mikulak (84.664) had the best overall scores of the U.S. squad, and they will each compete in the all-around final.
Japan, China and Russia topped the field, and those three teams finished within about three tenths of a point of one another. The United States is still well below those powerhouse nations with a 256.761 compared to first-place Japan’s 262.251. Results from this round do not carry over into Monday’s final, but Team USA would need major mishaps from one of those countries and an excellent performance of its own to have a chance of medaling.
Four American gymnasts advanced to individual apparatus finals: Mikulak (parallel bars), Malone (high bar), Yul Moldauer (floor) and Alec Yoder (pommel horse). Yoder is not part of the four-member team; he came as an individual, specifically for his ability on pommel horse. Yoder struggled in training two days before the competition, but his lone routine of the evening was terrific. He earned massive cheers from his teammates and the U.S. women’s team, which was watching from the stands.
U.S. women’s 4x100-meter relay team finishes fifth in prelims
TOKYO — The U.S. women’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay squad finished fifth in preliminary heats in the opening session of the Tokyo Olympics on Saturday, earning a spot in Sunday’s final but trailing top-seeded Australia by more than three seconds.
After much speculation over lineups, the U.S. ran out a quartet of Olivia Smoliga, Catie deLoof, Allison Schmitt and Natalie Hinds, who combined to post a time of 3:34.80. The U.S. decided against using veteran Simone Manuel, who won gold in the 100 free at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games but who failed to advance to the final in the same event at last month’s U.S. Olympic trials.
Manuel was eligible to swim the 4x100 relay as a member of the U.S. team, but the U.S. preferred to allow her to focus on her swim in the 50 free later in the meet.
Australia remains the heavy favorite in the event. It swam a 3:31.73 in topping the results from prelims.
Novak Djokovic lobbies for later start times in tennis to beat the heat
TOKYO — Novak Djokovic breezed through his first-round match against Bolivia’s Hugo Dellien on Saturday afternoon at Ariake Tennis Park with little drama. Djokovic was on familiar territory, playing on the same court where he won the 2019 Japan Open, and dispatched the 139th-ranked player in the world, 6-2, 6-2. The only unfamiliar sight in the drubbing came during the changeovers.
There, Djokovic and Dellien had all the usual tools at their disposal to battle the Tokyo heat and humidity, including cold towels, shaded chairs and plenty of cold water. Players also had what appeared to be personal cooling devices, contraptions that looked as though someone stuck a portable exhaust hose into a rolling cooler made for drinks. So scorching was the temperature on court — temperatures hovered in the low-90s almost all day, and hard courts absorb heat — that Djokovic adjusted the hose during multiple changeovers so air was blowing right in his face.
After the match, he and joined world No. 2 Daniil Medvedev, who played before Djokovic on Center Court, in lobbying tournament organizers to push the start of play from 11 a.m. to later in the afternoon.
“I agree with him 100 percent,” Djokovic said to Reuters after he was informed of Medvedev’s comments. “I actually asked as well. My team captain Viktor Troicki was speaking to the referee a couple of times. To be honest I don’t understand why they don’t start matches at say 3 p.m. I heard for tennis there’s some kind of curfew for them to finish by midnight. If that’s the case I just finished the last match. It’s not even 5 p.m.
“We still have like seven hours to play. They have the lights on all the courts, they’re going to make life much easier for all of us players. I just don’t understand why they don’t move it, I sincerely don’t understand.”
Unpleasant as it was, the heat didn’t seem to have much affect on the 20-time Grand Slam winner. He beat Dellien in just 61 minutes.
Michael Andrew wins heat in 100-meter breaststroke
TOKYO — In his first swim of these Olympics, American Michael Andrew won his heat in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke and finished third overall to advance easily into Sunday’s semifinals. Andrew’s time of 58.62 seconds was more than a second behind top-seeded Adam Peaty of Great Britain (57.46), the reigning world record holder.
Andrew Wilson of Bethesda, Md., finished seventh overall in 59.03 and also advanced easily to the semis.
Torri Huske flirts with world record pace in 100-meter butterfly
TOKYO — Eighteen-year-old American swimmer Torri Huske of Arlington, Va., flirted with world record pace in the preliminary heats of the 100-meter butterfly at the Tokyo Aquatic Centre on Saturday before settling for fourth place with a time of 56.29.
The time easily made it into Sunday’s semifinals in the event (Saturday night Eastern time), which will feature the top 16 finishers. American Claire Curran, 17, was 10th at 57.49.
China’s Yufei Zhang and Australia’s Emma McKeon tied for first at 55.82.
Huske, whose winning time from the U.S. Olympic trials was the fastest in the world this year, was under world record pace at the 50-meter mark, making the turn in 25.81, but was out-touched by Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom (56.18), the third-place finisher in prelims.
Sally Jenkins: The Olympic cauldron is lit. Let’s hope it’s not a fuse.
The only bubble at the Tokyo Games is the spit bubble coming out of Thomas Bach’s mouth. The International Olympic Committee president is lying to 11,000 international athletes with differing immune status and levels of exposure who are gathered unsafely amid a pandemic. And frankly he is lying to the world as well.
The IOC’s haphazard collection of rules wouldn’t stop a head cold, and Bach calls cracking a window a “countermeasure.” It would be laughable if you didn’t want to gag him with his own face mask, which is likely made of silk.
Bach assured the world there was “zero risk” that the Olympics would cause coronavirus infections. The risks have mounted by the day, with 128 coronavirus cases before the first full day of competition. At which point Bach has suddenly shifted his effervescent frothing to the other side of his mouth and declared that so many positive tests show the system is working.
“The technical term for that is bull----,” global health expert Dr. Annie Sparrow said.
Americans Chase Kalisz, Jay Litherland sail through prelims to open swim meet
TOKYO — Americans Chase Kalisz and Jay Litherland sailed into the final of the men’s 400-meter individual medley Saturday in the first event of the opening session of the Olympic swim meet.
Kalisz, the silver medalist in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, finished third in preliminary heats in 4:09.65, less than half a second behind top finisher Brendan Smith of Australia (4:09.27). Litherland finished tied for fifth at 4:09.91.
The bigger news in the 400 IM was the fact that Japanese star Daiya Seto, the top-ranked swimmer in the world this year in the event and the top seed entering prelims, failed to make the eight-man final, finishing ninth at 4:10.52.
Weightlifter’s Olympic moment wasn’t the one she hoped for
TOKYO — After all the training and daydreaming and anticipating, the Olympics often happen in a blip, and sometimes the blip is mean. So it went Saturday for Jourdan Delacruz, the 23-year-old weightlifter from north Texas with the good story and the bright future. At the elegant Tokyo International Forum amid the metropolis, she went from the verge of a bronze medal to the outskirts of the standings.
It happened in the 49-kg division, the first of the 14 female and male weight categories to go in Tokyo, when Delacruz could not convert any of her three lifts in the second of the two disciplines, the clean and jerk. All three lifts came at 108 kilograms (238.1 pounds), fewer than the American record 111 kilograms she had lifted in April at the Pan American Championships in Santo Domingo.
“I’m not really sure” what happened, she said in a quiet interview room more than an hour later, well after the extraordinary gold medalist Zhihui Hou of China, the giddy silver medalist Chanu Saikhom Mirabai of India and the merry bronze medalist Windy Cantika Aisah of Indonesia had passed through and greeted their national reporters.
“It felt a little bit heavier,” Delacruz said. “But warmup was really good, so sometimes it just doesn’t pull out on the platform.”
Jill Biden takes in three-on-three basketball game with Emmanuel Macron
TOKYO — First Lady Jill Biden arrived at Aomi Urban Sports Park in Tokyo on Saturday evening to watch the United States’ women’s three-on-three basketball team debut the sport at the Olympics against France.
Biden, one of a handful of world leaders in Tokyo for the start of the Games, entered the outdoor venue shortly before tip-off, taking a seat behind French President Emmanuel Macron. Biden cheered at different points of Team USA’s 17-10 victory, then stood and clapped after the final horn. Macron turned and gave her a fist bump after the result. Biden then greeted the American players courtside.
It was the second stop during a busy day for Biden. She arrived after hosting a U.S. vs. Mexico softball watch party with foreign service officers and their families at the U.S. Embassy earlier in the day. She planned to watch Team USA’s swim team later in the evening, followed by the U.S. women’s soccer game against New Zealand.
Jill Biden arrives at three-on-three basketball venue
TOKYO — First lady Jill Biden made an appearance at Aomi Urban Sports Park on Saturday for the U.S. women’s three-on-three basketball opener against France.
So, what is three-on-three basketball all about?
For the first time at the Summer Olympics, basketball fans will have two disciplines to follow when a fast-paced, showy version of the traditional five-a-side game debuts in Tokyo. This new event may look familiar to anyone accustomed to hunting for pickup games on their neighborhood courts: Teams will compete in 10-minute, first-to-21-point games where flashy shooters are rewarded and play will move at breakneck speed, in part because the court is smaller. Sound fun? It’s meant to be — the introduction of three-on-three basketball is part of the never-ending effort to attract younger viewers to the Games.
The U.S. women’s team is about to make its debut in Tokyo against France.
Richard Carapaz of Ecuador wins men’s cycling road race after challenge from American rider
Richard Carapaz of Ecuador claimed Olympic gold in the men’s cycling road race Saturday just weeks after finishing third at the Tour de France. Carapaz finished the 234-kilometer (145.4-mile) course with a winning time of 6:05:26, finishing more than a minute ahead of a pack in hot pursuit.
Wout van Aert of Belgium claimed silver and Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia took bronze, each with a time of 6:06:33. American Brandon McNulty, who also rode in the Tour de France, finished in sixth place, but he was in a lead pack with Carapaz as the race wound down, was alone in second within three miles of the finish line and was still in contention for a medal during the final sprint.
Carapaz emerged triumphant after a race that included an ascent of nearly 5,000 meters and a circuit at the base of Mount Fuji. The race started at Musashinonomori Park, about 25 kilometers west of Tokyo, and continued to the southwest away from the capital city, finishing at the Fuji Speedway.
The 28-year-old Carapaz, who won the Tour de Suisse in June, was cheered to the finish line by thousands of fans, a rarity at Tokyo 2020, where fans are banned from most events.
Carapaz’s gold medal is the second ever won by Ecuador and the first since a race walking gold in 1996.
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Tokyo Olympics Live Updates: Day 1: Swimming takes the stage - The Washington Post
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