Olympics Updates: Russia Wins the Gymnastics Team Final After Simone Biles’s Stunning Exit

Softball was then dropped from the Games, and on its return the same two teams met.

Biles, Team U.S.A.’s star, said she pulled out of the event because she wasn’t in the right place mentally to perform the difficult and often dangerous skills she is known for, after feeling so much pressure to be successful.

The Americans were aware of their impressive winning streak, which included Biles and the team known as “the Final Five” at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and Gabby Douglas and “the Fierce Five” at the 2012 London Games.

Since then, the United States has been far ahead of the world in the sport, winning world championships and Olympics by at least 4 points, a wide margin in a sport where competitors are often divided by less than a single point.

An untimely fall by Jordan Chiles, who landed on her rear end on one of her tumbling passes, gave Chiles a score of just 11.7 points, putting the Russians securely in the lead, for good.

YOKOHAMA, Japan — After a 13-year wait, of course it came down to this: the world’s softball powers, the United States and Japan, facing off for the gold medal on Tuesday.

Pitching in her third Olympics, Ueno, 39, vexed the United States once more.

The loss was the only one suffered by the U.S.

On Monday, Japan rested Ueno and lost to the United States in the teams’ final game of round-robin play, a contest that essentially did not matter: Both teams were by far the best of the tournament, and they had already claimed spots in the gold medal game.

At the time, the United States had never failed to win an Olympic gold medal in softball, dating to the sport’s introduction at the Games in 1996.

She coughed up an infield single in the first inning — a comebacker she couldn’t field cleanly — and a double in the second.

When Osterman walked Mana Atsumi to lead off the third inning, United States Coach Ken Erickson emerged from the dugout to bring in Ally Carda.

She gave Japan a 1-0 lead when Mana Atsumi chopped a ground ball and slid headfirst into first base to beat the throw.

Japan doubled its lead in the fifth inning, on a run-scoring single by Fujita after Abbott had entered the game in relief, and given the way Ueno was pitching, two runs felt like enough.

When Ueno surrendered a single to lead off the sixth inning, Miu Goto came on in relief and used a fortuitous ricochet to erase a threat by the United States.

Osaka lost, 6-1, 6-4, to Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic in barely over one hour in a stunning upset of the host country’s biggest sports celebrity.

She committed 20 errors in the set, 14 of them unforced, and while she did not double-fault, she also could not rely on her serve to take control of the match the way she usually does.

The loss stunned the handful of people in attendance at Ariake Tennis Park, where a phalanx of Japanese photographers lined the court.

Because Osaka lit the Olympic cauldron late Friday night in the climax of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games, her opening match was moved from Saturday morning to Sunday.

She nearly matched Vondrousova on points and even managed to break Vondrousova’s serve, but the young Czech played with a cool beyond her 22 years, given the magnitude of the moment.

Vondrousova said she benefited from the timing and location of the match.

“I am really sorry but I am so happy with my game today,” Vondrousova said.

She revealed that she has struggled with depression since 2018, and said she is uncomfortable in the sometimes adversarial public setting of news conferences.

To the public, it was unclear for a while when Osaka would play again, even with the Olympics coming.

The Olympic tournament is also played on a hard court, the surface on which Osaka has had the most success.

On Friday night, she joined a short list of illustrious Olympic flame lighters, including Muhammad Ali and Wayne Gretzky.

A fresh board was given to him on the beach, and Ferreira was soon riding to a pair of scores that gave him a lead he never relinquished.

Igarashi, 23, had already knocked out one Brazilian superstar, Gabriel Medina, in the semifinal.

“The ride was probably about seven seconds long, but it felt like 70 minutes long,” Igarashi said immediately afterward.

Owen Wright of Australia beat Medina in the men’s bronze medal match.

Buitendag, 27, had arrived through a string of upsets, beating seven-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore in the third round and 19-year-old American Caroline Marks in the semifinal.

The sudden decision to squeeze so much surfing into one day was made on Monday night, as the storm churned off the east coast of central Japan, sending swells toward Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach.

After winning her semifinal heat, she said she was happy to keep the momentum going.

A 0-0 tie with Australia on a cool night delivered the United States — a medal favorite whose generational dominance was called into question last week — to the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament.

Instead, in the race of her life, Lydia Jacoby, a 17-year-old Alaskan, tapped the wall first and then gazed toward the scoreboard at the Tokyo Aquatics Center.

Swimming has delivered surprises at the Tokyo Games, and Jacoby’s gold medal performance ranked among the most shocking so far.

King, 24, claimed the bronze — an anticlimactic result for one of the sport’s most outspoken personalities.

Another relative upset played out in the men’s 100-meter backstroke, an event that Americans had won at every Olympics since 1996.

“That was my best swim of the year, so it’s nice to be able to do that in the pressure-packed final,” he said, adding: “Shoot for the stars, land on the moon.

King had made waves at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro for engaging in a personal rivalry with Yuliya Efimova of Russia, a six-time world champion.

Yet Osaka lost Tuesday to the 42nd-ranked player in the world, Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic, in a third-round trouncing, 6-1, 6-4.

Barty, the Australian tennis player who is the world No.

It also played Australia to a scoreless draw, although that was good enough for the U.S.

Japan beat the U.S., 2-0, on Tuesday in a replay of the last time these two rival teams faced off for the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games, when Japan won and softball was then dropped from the Olympics.

Granted, it was foretold, as Ledecky’s emerging rival, Ariarne Titmus of Australia, had posted better times than her recently in the 400-meter freestyle.

In a stunning upset, Ryan Murphy of the United States settled for bronze in the men’s 100-meter backstroke.

Kieran Smith of the United States, the bronze medalist in the 400-meter freestyle, got off to a slow start and could not recover, finishing sixth.

Kylie Masse of Canada took silver, and Regan Smith of the United States, who had set an Olympic record in the semifinals, won bronze.

One mistake can alter the outcome of an entire match, which lasts just 14 minutes.

American hooker Steve Tomasin was given a yellow card for intentionally knocking the ball forward to stop play, sending him to the sideline for two minutes and leaving the American side short handed.

team was ranked second in the world before the pandemic and out to redeem their performance in the Rio Games, when they missed advancing by just one point.

The Americans came out flying against Britain, scoring three tries within five minutes, including two that came after they converted British miscues.

“We started really well, we took control of the game, we had an opportunity,” American coach Mike Friday said.

Sevens, the faster, more wide-open cousin of 15-man rugby union, is more about speed and finding open space.

Regardless of the result in the consolations on Wednesday, the Americans are likely to go home disappointed.

“We’ve gone from being no-hopers in 2014 to participating in 2016 to being contenders in 2020,” Friday said.

Duffy was two seconds behind Zaferes coming out of the swim transition, and once off their bikes, Duffy and Zaferes were neck and neck.

Duffy is the only person to win three triathlon world titles in the same year, capturing the World Triathlon championship race, the Xterra world championships and the ITU Cross world championships in 2016.

In an interview earlier this year, Duffy said heat, humidity and water temperature would be the biggest variables.

Duffy, who lives and trains in Boulder, Colo., began competing in triathlon when she was 7.

On Monday, Kristian Blummenfelt of Norway took home gold in the men’s triathlon.

The Dutch delegation said it was unhappy about the quarantine conditions for those who tested positive for the coronavirus, two officials said during a news conference on Tuesday.

A part of the Dutch delegation left the Netherlands for Tokyo on July 17 on a KLM flight, according to the Dutch broadcaster NOS.

Mr. Hendriks told the NOS that he had asked Olympic organizers for months about what the protocols would be in this situation.

tests are to be isolated at designated facilities, though the location and length of isolation vary depending on the severity of the case.

Tokyo officials said that 2,848 people had tested positive for the virus, the highest daily count since the pandemic began.

Tokyo entered its fourth state of emergency this month as the city prepared to host the Olympics, which were delayed for a year because of the pandemic.

Japan’s vaccination program got off to a slow start, and three-quarters of the population has not been fully inoculated against Covid-19, according to New York Times data.

The Olympics has been a source of anxiety for many in the country, who feared that it could become a superspreader event.

As of Tuesday, 160 people connected to the Games, including 21 athletes, had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Olympic organizers and Times reporting.

So far, at least 225 people with Olympic credentials, including 26 athletes, have tested positive for the coronavirus in Japan.

The bank liked the idea, and two million seven-dollar notes were printed.

It is hard to overestimate rugby’s importance to Fiji.

TOKYO — Simone Biles lost her way midair while vaulting in the women’s team final on Tuesday, then suddenly exited the competition, saying she wasn’t mentally prepared to compete.

Biles had planned to do an Amanar, a difficult vault with two and a half twists.

Youness Baalla’s attempt to latch on to David Nyika’s ear failed while the pair were clinched together late in their 81- to 91-kilogram preliminary match on Tuesday.

“He didn’t get a full mouthful,” Nyika said.

According to his profile on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics website, Baalla, 22, was ranked No.

But in a country where mascots play a major role in corporate branding and merchandising, they have mostly been a subdued presence at the very event they were made to represent.

The Japanese public is not really swooning over them either, according to fans and experts who study the country’s mascot industry.

Japan’s best-known mascot may be Kumamon, a cuddly bear from Kumamoto Prefecture that helped popularize the yuru-chara phenomenon about a decade ago.

As of Tuesday, the Olympic and Paralympic mascots had about 15,000 Instagram followers between them, a small fraction of Chiitan’s nearly 900,000.

They seem to be doing a good job,” said Jillian Rae Suter, a professor of informatics at Shizuoka University, southwest of Tokyo, who has studied Japanese mascots.

…Read the full story