Roundup of Olympic gold medals from Monday
TOKYO — A roundup of gold medals from Monday, July 26, at the Tokyo Games:
Archery
South Korea defended its Olympic men’s archery team title at the Tokyo Games.
Energetic 17-year-old Kim Je-deok came up clutch in the semifinals to hold off host nation Japan and then again in a 6-0 win over Chinese Taipei during the gold-medal match at Yumenoshima Park Archery Field.
In the bronze medal match, Hiroki Muto helped Japan beat the Netherlands in a shoot-off with a walk-off arrow that nearly landed in the heart of the target.
Canoe
Slovenia’s Benjamin Savsek won gold in the men’s canoe slalom ahead of the Czech Republic’s Lukas Rohan and Germany’s Sideris Tasiadis.
Savsek is ranked No. 7 in the world. He knew he had the time to beat after a clean run with no time penalties, and pumped his first as he crossed the finish line. He didn’t have long to wait to see his time of 98.25 seconds hold up as the winner.
Rohan’s run included a gate touch and 2-second penalty and he finished 3.71 seconds off the lead. Tasiadis, who came in ranked No. 1 in the world and won silver in 2012, was a distant 5.45 seconds slower than Savsek.
Cycling
Tom Pidcock won the Olympic men’s mountain bike race, extending Britain’s dominance from the road and track to the dirt.
Leaving reigning champion Nino Schurter and his Swiss teammate Mathias Flueckiger behind on the fourth of seven laps, the 21-year-old multidiscipline prodigy proceeded to dominate the toughest course in Olympic history.
Flueckiger gave chase in vain and was left with a silver medal. David Valero Serrano of Spain won a surprise bronze.
Diving
Britain’s Tom Daley and Matty Lee won gold in men’s 10-meter synchronized diving, ending any chance of a sweep by China at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
Daley and Lee sealed their victory with a brilliant final dive and received one perfect 10 from the judges. Every other mark but one was a 9.0 or 9.5.
Daley and Lee finished with a total score of 471.81 points, edging China’s Cao Yuan and Chen Aisen by a mere 1.23. It was the first Olympic gold for Daley, long the star of British diving. He had previously claimed a pair of bronze medals.
The bronze went to Russia’s Aleksandr Bondar and Viktor Minibaev with 439.92.
Fencing
Sofia Pozdniakova won an all-Russian fencing final 15-11 to take goal in women’s saber and consign teammate Sofya Velikaya to a third consecutive silver medal in the event.
Pozdniakova is the daughter of Russian Olympic Committee president and four-time gold medalist Stanislav Pozdnyakov. He was watching in the arena. Russia is competing under the guise of the ROC at the Tokyo Games in the latest doping-related sanctions from the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Velikaya was the individual saber runner-up at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. She also has a team gold from 2016.
Manon Brunet of France won the bronze medal after beating Anna Marton of Hungary 15-6.
• Cheung Ka Long won Hong Kong’s second Olympic gold medal in its history by beating defending champion Daniele Garozzo 15-11 in the men’s foil fencing final.
Cheung secured the win with a video review for the last point and then ran to celebrate with his coach. Garozzo earlier needed medical treatment after straining a thigh muscle when Cheung led 6-5.
Hong Kong’s only previous Olympic win was gold for Lee Lai Shan in women’s windsurfing in 1996.
Alexander Choupenitch won bronze for the Czech Republic after beating Takahiro Shikine of Japan 15-8.
Gymnastics
The team representing the Russian Olympic Committee rode remarkable performances by Artur Dalaloyan and Nikita Nagornyy to edge Japan and China in a taut men’s team gymnastics final.
The victory marked the first Olympic title for the Russians since the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Russia’s total of 262.500 points was just good enough to hold off the sport’s other two superpowers. Japan used a brilliant high bar routine by Daiki Hashimoto in the final rotation to surge past China for second with a score of 262.397.
The Chinese were undone by a fall from Lin Chaopan on floor exercise during the first rotation.
Judo
Nora Gjakova won Kosovo’s second gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics with an ippon victory over France’s Sarah Leonie Cysique at 57 kilograms.
Gjakova joined Distria Krasniqi, who won gold at 48kg on Saturday, as the second and third gold medalists in Kosovo’s entire Olympic history. Majlinda Kelmendi won Kosovo’s first at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, also in judo.
Gjakova was declared the winner 2:45 into the bout when Cysique was given a hansuko make penalty for what officials claimed was a deliberate dive onto her head in an attempt to escape a hold.
Gjakova reached the final with a shocking semifinal victory over Japan’s Tsukasa Yoshida, becoming the first judoka to beat the home nation’s entrant before the final. Yoshida rallied to claim a bronze medal. Canada’s Jessica Klimkait won the other bronze.
• Judo superstar Shohei Ono won Olympic gold medal at 73kg after an epic lightweight final against Georgia’s Lasha Shavdatuashvili.
Ono and Shavdatuashvili went 5:26 into golden score before the Japanese champion finally threw Shavdatuashvili for a waza ari. He used both legs to get Shavdatuashvili airborne and put him harshly onto his left side.
South Korea’s An Changrim claimed one bronze medal after a thrilling bout with Azeri No. 1 seed Rustam Orujov, and Mongolia’s Tsogtbaatar Tsend-Ochir claimed the other bronze.
Shooting
American shooter Amber English set an Olympic record to knock off reigning women’s skeet champion Diana Bacosi of Italy.
English, ranked No. 1 in the world, hit 56 of 60 targets to bounce back from just missing the U.S. Olympic team for the 2012 and 2016 Games.
Bacosi matched English by hitting 47 of 50 shots to reach the final, but missed on her third attempt and a chance to repeat as Olympic champion.
China’s Wei Meng took bronze after tying a world record in qualifying.
• Vincent Hancock became the first skeet shooter to win three Olympic gold medals with a victory Monday.
Hancock repeated as gold medalist in 2008 and 2012, but had a disappointing finish at the 2016 Rio Games.
The 38-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas, hit his first 26 targets in the Tokyo final and set an Olympic record with 59 of 60 overall. He beat Denmark’s Jesper Hanen by four.
Kuwait’s Abdullah Al-Rashidi won bronze after taking bronze at the Rio Games as an Independent Olympic Athlete.
Skateboarding
Momiji Nishiya of Japan won the first ever Olympic skateboard competition for women.
The 13-year-old gave the host nation a sweep of golds in the street event a day after after Yuto Horigome won the men’s event.
Rayssa Leal, a 13-year-old from Brazil, won the silver. That’s her country’s second in skateboarding after Brazilian Kelvin Hoefler took silver on Sunday in the men’s event.
The women’s bronze went to Funa Nakayama, also from Japan.
Swimming
Maggie MacNeil captured Canada’s first gold medal at the pool with a victory in the women’s 100-meter butterfly.
The reigning world champion touched first in 55.59 seconds, edging out China’s Zhang Yufei (55.64) for the top spot. Australia’s Emma McKeon took the bronze in 55.72, beating American teenager Torri Huske by one-hundredth of a second.
Huske went out fast, as is her style, and appeared to be close to the front with about 10 meters to go. But she faded on her final strokes and just missed a spot on the podium.
The U.S. team was denied a medal for the first time in the swimming competition.
Defending champion and world-record holder Sarah Sjöström of Sweden was seventh.
• Britain’s Adam Peaty repeated as Olympic champion in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke.
Peaty was perhaps the surest best at the Olympic pool, being the first man to break both 58 and 57 seconds in his signature event. He posted the fifth-fastest time in history (57.37 seconds) to blow away the field.
Arno Kamminga of the Netherlands claimed the silver in 58.00, while the bronze went to Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi in 58.33. American Michael Andrew was next in 58.84 — the second straight final in which a U.S. swimmer finished fourth and was denied a medal.
• Australia’s Ariarne Titmus defeated American Katie Ledecky in the 400-meter freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics.
Titmus won one of the most anticipated races of the games, capturing the gold medal with the second-fastest time in history.
Titmus, who trailed by nearly a full body-length at the halfway mark of the eight-lap race, turned on the speed to touch in 3 minutes, 56.69 seconds.
Defending Olympic champion and world-record holder Ledecky settled for the silver this time in 3:57.36 — the fourth-fastest time ever recorded.
No one else was even close. The bronze went to China’s Li Bingjie in 4:01.08.
• Caeleb Dressel led off an American victory in the men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay. Dressel gave the U.S. a lead it never relinquished, swimming the first leg in a blistering 47.26 seconds.
Blake Pieroni and Bowe Becker kept the Americans out front before Zach Apple turned in an anchor leg of 46.69 to leave no doubt at the end.
The U.S. won gold in 3 minutes, 08.97 seconds, the third-fastest relay in history. Italy took the silver in 3:10.11, with the bronze going to Australia in 3:10.22.
Table tennis
Japan ended China’s overwhelming dominance in table tennis by winning Olympic gold in mixed doubles in a major upset.
Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito beat a Chinese team that has often seemed unbeatable. China won all four gold medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the team of Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen was a heavy favorite this time.
Mizutani won bronze in singles in Rio and Ito is considered by some to be China’s biggest threat in the female ranks.
China won the first two games 11-5 and 11-7 but Japan took the next three 11-8, 11-9 and 11-9. China then won the sixth game 11-6 to set up a deciding seventh game which Japan dominated. The host country took an 8-0 lead and held on for an 11-6 victory.
China’s table tennis team is so strong that world champion Liu didn’t even make the women’s singles’ team and is only playing team events.
Taekwondo
Matea Jelić has won Croatia’s first gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics by beating Lauren Williams of Britain 25-21 in the women’s taekwondo 67-kilogram final.
Jelić trailed by six points with less than 20 seconds remaining at the Makuhari Messe convention center but she incredibly landed three head kicks in the waning moments to charge back in front. The 23-year-old Jelić is the current European champion and she reached final with a 15-4 semifinal victory over former U.S. bronze medalist Paige McPherson.
Williams’ last-minute loss followed teammate Bradly Sinden’s painfully similar defeat to Ulugbek Rashitov of Uzbekistan on Sunday in a gold medal bout.
Hedaya Malak of Egypt and Ruth Gbagbi of Ivory Coast won bronze.
• Maksim Khramtcov won the gold medal in men’s 80-kilogram taekwondo by beating Saleh El-Sharabaty of Jordan 20-9 in the final despite what the Russian Olympic Committee said was a broken bone in his right arm or wrist.
Khramtcov is among the sport’s top athletes as a two-time European champion and he cemented his reputation with a dominant run at Makuhari Messe convention center despite his injury.
Khramtcov still won his four bouts by a combined 68-16.
El-Sharabaty’s silver was the second medal in Jordan’s Olympic history. Ahmad Abughaush won gold in taekwondo in Rio de Janeiro for Jordan’s first medal.
Seif Eissa of Egypt and Toni Kanaet of Croatia won bronze.
Weightlifting
Hidilyn Diaz has become the first Olympic gold medalist from the Philippines after winning the women’s 55-kilogram weightlifting category.
Diaz overtook Liao Qiuyun of China on her last lift in the clean and jerk to win with a total 224 kilograms. That was one more than Liao.
China had won all three events so far and was hoping to sweep the gold medals in the eight competitions its athletes have entered. Liao came into the competition as the world record holder with a total 227kg.
Zulfiya Chinshanlo of Kazakhstan took bronze with 213kg. Chinshanlo won what was then the 53-kilogram class at the 2012 London Olympics, but was stripped of her gold medal after a positive test for two banned steroids.