TOKYO – The Latest on the Tokyo Olympics, which are taking place under heavy restrictions after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic:
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World champion the Netherlands is out of the women’s handball competition at the Tokyo Olympics after a 32-22 loss to France in the quarterfinals.
France led 19-11 at half time as it crushed the Dutch hopes of a first ever Olympic medal in the sport. Laura Flippes led the French team with six goals.
France’s semifinal opponent is Sweden, which beat South Korea 39-30. Kang Kyungmin top-scored for South Korea with eight goals and three Swedish players had six apiece.
The 2016 Olympic gold medalist Russian team faces Norway in the other semifinal game.
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The world champions of the decathlon and heptathlon are out of Olympic medal contention after breaking down during their last races of the day.
Heptathlon world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson injured her right calf muscle as she rounded the bend in the 200 meters, the fourth event of the competition. About an hour later, decathlon world champion Niklas Kaul of Germany appeared to injure an ankle during the 400-meter race, the fifth of 10 disciplines, and did not finish.
Damian Warner of Canada leads at the halfway point of the decathlon with 4,722 points, 81 ahead of Australia’s Ash Moloney.
Johnson-Thompson slowed to a stop at the top of the straight and sat on the track before waving away medical attendants who went to her assistance — including one pushing a wheelchair. She got up and limped across the finish line but was disqualified for stepping out of her lane. Her preparation was hampered by a series of injuries, including her left Achilles tendon.
Johnson-Thompson had been in fifth place after the 100-meter hurdles, high jump and long jump.
With three events to go, 2017 world championship bronze medalist Anouk Vetter of the Netherlands leads with 3,968 points. She is 27 points clear of Noor Vidts of Belgium and 47 ahead of defending Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam.
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Gold medal favorite Janja Garnbret of Slovenia turned the Olympic bouldering course into her own personal playground, topping all four “problems” to lead sport climbing qualifying at the Tokyo Games.
Garnbret struggled in her worst event, speed, finishing 14th. The 22-year-old “flashed” through the boulder course, topping each problem in one try. She was the only climber to top all four boulders.
Garnbret finished fourth in lead and had 56 points, 29 ahead of Korea’s Seo Chaehyun.
Scoring is determined by multiplying each climber’s position in the three disciplines. The finals are Friday.
Japan’s Miho Nonaka and Akiyo Noguchi, two of the top contenders to knock off Garnbret, were third and fourth.
American Brooke Raboutou was fifth.
British climbing great Shauna Coxey failed to qualify in her final competitive event before retiring.
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Tetsuto Yamada hit a tiebreaking, three-run double off the top of the 16-foot wall in left-center in the eighth inning, and Japan beat South Korea 5-2 to earn a spot in the gold medal baseball game.
Go Woo-suk nearly was out of the inning with one runner on when Kensuke Kondoh hit a one-out grounder to first baseman Oh Jae-il, who threw to second. Go took the return throw from shortstop Oh Ji-hwan but couldn’t get his foot on first to complete a double play, a call upheld by video review. Korea had claimed Kondoh took a turn toward second and was tagged.
After a wild pitch, an intentional walk to Munetaka Murakami and a walk to Takuya Kai, Yamada hit his second double of the game.
Baseball-mad Japan is pursuing its first Olympic gold in the tournament held primarily in Yokohama.
South Korea will play a semifinal against the U.S. on Thursday. The winner advances to face Japan for gold on Saturday, and the loser will play the Dominican Republic in the bronze medal game.
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MEDAL ALERT
Andre de Grasse of Canada has won the Olympic gold medal in the 200-meter race five years after finishing second to Usain Bolt.
De Grasse won in a national record time of 19.62 seconds, holding off two Americans for the medals.
Kenneth Bednarek won silver in a personal best 19.68 seconds and 2019 world champion Noah Lyles took bronze in 19.74.
Erriyon Knighton, the youngest member of the U.S. men’s track team at 17, placed fourth in 19.93.
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MEDAL ALERT
Japan’s Yukako Kawai held on to beat Kyrgyzstan’s Aisuluu Tynybekova 4-3 in the women’s freestyle 62-kilogram final.
Tynybekova, the No. 1 seed, had won her first three matches by a combined score of 24-0. It's Japan’s first wrestling gold at these Olympics.
Kawai’s sister, Risako Kawai, will wrestle for her second Olympic gold Thursday in the 57-kg class.
In the bronze medal matches, Ukraine’s Iryna Koliadenko defeated Latvia’s Anastasija Grigorjeva 3-1 and Bulgaria’s Taybe Mustafa Yusein beat the Russian Olympic Committee’s Liubov Ovcharova 10-0 in a match that lasted 56 seconds.
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MEDAL ALERT
Lasha Talakhadze of Georgia has set three world records to retain his title in the heaviest men’s weightlifting category, while Syria earned its first medal since the country’s civil war began.
Talakhadze lifted a world-record 223 kilograms in the snatch and 265 in the clean and jerk for a total 488. All three figures broke his own world records in the over-109kg category.
That beat Iran’s Ali Davoudi into second place by the vast margin of 47kg.
Man Asaad of Syria took the bronze with a total 424kg. Syria’s last Olympic medal in any sport was a boxing bronze in 2004.
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MEDAL ALERT
Wojciech Nowicki of Poland finally has a gold medal after winning the men’s hammer throw.
The 32-year-old Nowicki led from the first round and improved with each of his first three attempts to reach a personal best 82.52 meters, the winning mark.
He was a bronze medalist at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and won bronze medals at three world championships.
Eivind Henriksen of Norway set a national record with a 81.58 throw in the fifth round and finished with the silver medal.
Four-time world champion Pawel Fajdek of Poland took bronze with a mark of 81.53.
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MEDAL ALERT
Emmanuel Korir won gold and led a Kenyan one-two finish in the 800 meters at the Olympics.
Korir pushed his way past Australia’s Peter Bol on the last turn and surged home to win in 1 minute, 45.06 seconds. It was Kenya’s fourth straight victory in the 800 at the Olympics.
Teammate Ferguson Rotich took silver with a late kick to overtake Poland’s Patryk Dobek, who held on for bronze ahead of Bol.
Kenya has claimed this title at every Olympics since Beijing 2008.
World-record holder David Rudisha won the last two Olympic gold medals in the 800 but he didn’t make Kenya’s team this year because of long-term injury problems. Clayton Murphy of the United States, the bronze medalist in 2016, finished last.
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Ben Maher earned Britain its second straight gold in equestrian individual jumping by besting five riders in a jump off.
Maher follows Nick Skelton, who retired shortly after winning gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, to give the country its second gold overall in the event.
Just six of the 30 finalists completed their runs without penalty, and Maher, riding Explosion, had the fastest time out of all of them in the jump-off round at 37.85.
Peder Fredricson of Sweden earned silver for the second straight games with a jump-off time of 38.02 seconds. Maikel van der Vleuten of the Netherlands won bronze at 38.90.
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World champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson injured her leg running in the 200-meter race of the heptathlon and was disqualified from the event.
She waved away people who went to help her, got up and limped to the finish line, but was not credited with a time.
Johnson-Thompson won the world championship title at Doha, Qatar, in 2019. She was in fifth place after the 100-meter hurdles, the high jump and the shot put but is now out of contention.
She went immediately for medical treatment. The 28-year-old British athlete had an injury-interrupted preparation for the Tokyo Games.
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MEDAL ALERT
Russia’s Svetlana Romashina claimed her record sixth Olympic gold medal in artistic swimming, teaming with Svetlana Kolesnichenko to win the duet.
The Russians were heavy favorites in a sport they have dominated for more than two decades. Their last Olympic loss in the sport formerly known as synchronized swimming came at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Romashina had been tied with fellow Russians Anastasia Davydova and Natalia Ishchenko with five gold medals apiece.
Now, Romashina is in a class by herself after a riveting performance accompanied by the music “Spiders.”
The Russian pair received marks of 98.8000 for their free routine for a combined score of 195.9079.
The silver went to China’s Huang Xuechen and Sun Wenyan at 192.4499, while Ukraine’s Marta Fiedina and Anastasiya Savchuk beat out Japan for the bronze with 189.4620.
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MEDAL ALERT
Ukraine’s Zhan Beleniuk beat Hungary’s Viktor Lorincz 5-1 in the men’s Greco-Roman 87 kilogram final.
Beleniuk, the No. 2 seed, was an Olympic silver medalist in 2016. Lorincz was the No. 1 seed.
In bronze medal matches, Germany’s Denis Kudla defeated Egypt’s Mohamed Metwally and Serbia’s Zurabi Datunashvili beat Croatia’s Ivan Huklek.
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WORLD RECORD
Georgian weightlifter Lasha Talakhadze has set a new world record in the snatch lift with 223 kilograms.
Talakhadze set the new record in the super-heavyweight, over-109-kilogram category with apparent ease even though he had to lift three times in a row because his entry weight was higher than anything attempted by his rivals.
Talakhadze has a commanding lead of 23 kilograms at the halfway point of the competition with Ali Davoudi of Iran in second before the clean and jerk.
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MEDAL ALERT
Peruth Chemutai of Uganda made her move on the last lap and pulled away for the win in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase final at the Tokyo Games.
Chemutai set a new national record with her time of 9 minutes, 1.45 seconds. American Courtney Frerichs took off from the pack with around 2 1/2 laps to go. She was chased down by Chemutai but held on down the stretch for silver. Hyvin Kiyeng of Kenya was third.
Emma Coburn of the United States was disqualified for what was listed as a lane infringement after finishing behind the field. She earned bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
The 22-year-old Chemutai finished fifth at the 2019 world championships in Doha.
Frerichs was a silver medalist at the 2017 world championships in London.
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MEDAL ALERT
Iran’s Mohammadreza Geraei beat Ukraine’s Parviz Nasibov 9-1 to win gold in the men’s Greco-Roman 67-kilogram class.
Germany’s Frank Staebler defeated Georgia’s Ramaz Zoidze 5-4 in one of the bronze medal matches. Staebler had previously announced he would retire after the Olympics. The 32-year-old is a three-time world champion who ended his career by winning his first Olympic medal.
Egypt’s Mohamed Ibrahim Elsayed defeated Russian Olympic Committee’s Artem Surkov in the other bronze medal match.
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France’s Bassa Mawem has pulled out of the sport climbing final at the Tokyo Olympics after rupturing a tendon in his left biceps during qualifying.
Mawem was injured during the final of three disciplines while reaching up with his left arm near the bottom of the lead wall. He immediately fell off the wall and stood at the bottom holding his biceps as an official untied his rope.
Mawem still managed to join his brother in qualifying for the finals after finishing first in boulder and 18th in speed.
The French Olympic Committee said Mawem is returning home to have surgery.
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MEDAL ALERT
Britain has won gold in the two-person dinghy sailing event.
Hannah Mills becomes the first British woman to win at least three Olympic medals in sailing. She and Eilidh McIntyre won at Enoshima Yacht Harbor. Britain also won in Rio in 2016.
Agnieszka Skrzypulec and Jolanta Ogar of Poland won silver. Ogar, 39, becomes the oldest woman to win an Olympic medal in sailing.
Camille Lecointre and Aloise Retornaz of France won bronze.
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MEDAL ALERT
Italy has broken its own world record to win the gold medal in men’s team pursuit cycling at the Tokyo Olympics.
The team of Simone Consonni, Filippo Ganna, Francesco Lamon and Jonathan Milan stopped the clock in 3:42.032 to edge world champion Denmark in a dramatic final at the Izu Velodrome. Denmark finished in 3:42.203.
The Italians led through the first half of the 4,000-meter race, then watched as the Danish team of Lasse Norman Hansen, Niklas Larsen, Frederik Madsen and Rasmus Pedersen pulled ahead.
Over the last five laps, the Italians wiped out a deficit of nearly a half-second to win the gold medal.
Australia, the silver medalist in Rio, took the bronze. The Aussies were in a tight race with New Zealand before a touch of wheels sent one of the Kiwi riders to the ground and effectively eliminated them from contention.
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A pair of teenagers gave China a 1-2 finish in the preliminaries of women’s 10-meter platform diving.
The Chinese have won five of six diving events so far, and earned eight medals overall at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
China has won every women’s diving event at the past three Olympics.
Chen Yuxi, a 15-year-old who is the current world champion, and her 14-year-old teammate, Quan Hongchan, led 18 women into the semifinals on Thursday.
Chen totaled 390.70 points for five dives. Quan was second at 364.45.
Quan fell from second to 25th on her third dive, earning just 47.85 points. That was her lowest score of the round. But she rebounded on her fourth dive with 76.80 points to tie for first.
American Delaney Schnell was third at 360.75. Her teammate, Katrina Young, squeaked into the semifinals in 17th place.
Schnell already won a silver medal in 10-meter synchro with partner Jessica Parratto, one of three diving medals for the United States.
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A Russian athlete competing in karate has been ruled out of the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The Russian Karate Federation says on Instagram that Anna Chernysheva will not be able to compete and that her positive test was confirmed by a second test.
The 19-year-old was the Russian Olympic Committee team’s only karate athlete at the Olympics. She was due to compete Thursday in the women’s 55-kilogram kumite event on the first ever day of Olympic karate competition. It’s a new sport on the program in Tokyo.
Olympic organizers also say Algerian weightlifter Walid Bidani has withdrawn from the men’s over-109-kilogram event Wednesday “due to health situation which requires him to undergo quarantine.” The statement doesn’t mention the cause. Bidani won gold at the African championships in May.
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Harrie Lavreysen and Dutch teammate Jeffrey Hoogland tied for the Olympic record in qualifying for the men’s sprint at the Izu Velodrome, clocking the same time of 9.215 down to the thousandth of a second.
In the qualifying rounds, cyclists get what’s called a flying start before they are timed over 200 meters.
That means the two Dutch riders averaged 48.55 mph during their qualifying lap.
Hoogland will be seeded first and Lavreysen second for the knockout rounds. That’s when riders face off against each other in a cat-and-mouse game over three laps with the fastest to the finish line advancing to the next round.
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MEDAL ALERT
Mat Belcher and Will Ryan of Australia have won the two-person dinghy event at the Tokyo Olympics.
Belcher won gold at the London Olympics in 2012 in the 470 class and combined with Ryan to win the silver medal at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Belcher and Ryan only had to finish the last race without penalty to clinch the gold medal.
Anton Dahlberg and Fredrik Bergstrom of Sweden won the silver medal and Spain’s Nicolas Rodriguez Garcia-Paz and Jordi Xammar took bronze.
The women’s two-person dinghy, the last medal race in sailing at the Tokyo Games , was scheduled later Wednesday.
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MEDAL ALERT
Arlen López has won his second Olympic boxing gold medal for Cuba, beating Britain’s Benjamin Whittaker in the light heavyweight final at the Kokugikan Arena.
López outclassed the defense-minded Whittaker to win the fight on four of the five judges’ scorecards. Cuba had never won gold at light heavyweight in its decorated Olympic boxing history until Julio Cesar La Cruz claimed the title in Rio de Janeiro.
López is the second Cuban boxer in two days to win a second gold medal in a different weight class by beating a British fighter after Roniel Iglesias achieved the same feat Tuesday. López won the middleweight division in Rio.
Russian athlete Imam Khataev and Cuban-born Loren Alfonso of Azerbaijan won light heavyweight bronze medals.
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The defending champion Russian women’s handball team has reached the semifinals with a 32-26 win over Montenegro after a troubled start to the tournament.
The Russian Olympic Committee team seemed unlikely to play for a medal after opening Olympic play with a 24-24 tie with Brazil and a crushing 36-24 loss to Sweden.
Further complicating matters, former coach Evgeny Trefilov has often been in the arena, sometimes calling out instructions which clashed with those from the coaches on the sideline.
Now, though, the Russians are on a four-game winning streak after beating Hungary, Spain and France to qualify from the group stage before dismissing Montenegro in the quarterfinals.
The Russian team’s semifinal opponent is Norway, which beat Hungary 26-22 on seven goals from Kari Brattset Dale. That sets up a repeat of the 2016 semifinals, when Russia beat Norway 38-37 in overtime.
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American silver medalist Raven Saunders says her mother has died.
The shot putter wrote on her Twitter account early Wednesday that “my mama was a great woman and will forever live through me. My number one guardian angel.”
Media reports say that Clarissa Saunders died in Orlando, Florida, where she had been attending Olympic watch parties. Raven Saunders won silver Sunday.
At the medal ceremony, she stepped off the podium, lifted her arms above her head and formed an X with her wrists. Asked what that meant, she explained: ”It’s the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet.”
The International Olympic committee was investigating whether the gesture violated a prohibition on political statements at medal ceremonies, but suspended the investigation after Saunders' mother’s death.
Spokesman Mark Adams says the IOC “extends its condolences to Raven and her family.”
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NBA veteran Pau Gasol has been voted by his fellow Tokyo Games athletes to represent them as a member of the International Olympic Committee.
The IOC says Gasol got the most votes among 30 candidates for four vacant seats on the Olympic body. The results were announced the day after Gasol and Spain lost in the quarterfinals to the United States.
Gasol will be an IOC member for seven years through the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, where he won two NBA titles with the Lakers.
The three-time Olympic medalist got 1,888 votes of more than 6,800 cast by athletes at Tokyo.
The other new members are cyclist Maja Martyna Wloszczowska of Poland, Italian swimmer Federica Pellegrini and Japan’s Yuki Ota, from IOC president Thomas Bach’s sport of fencing.
The losing candidates include Danka Bartekova, the Slovakian shooter who has been an IOC member since 2012, men’s high jump gold medalist Mutaz Barshim of Qatar, and Australian swimmer Cate Campbell who won two relay gold medals in Tokyo.
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The U.S. women’s volleyball team has made it to the semifinals for the sixth time in the past eight Olympics after beating the Dominican Republic in straight sets in the quarterfinals.
The Americans advanced to a matchup with the winner of Serbia-Italy in semis, despite playing without injured starters Jordyn Poulter and Jordan Thompson.
Fill-ins Micha Hancock and Annie Drews helped set the tone early for the U.S. and the team wasn’t seriously challenged at any point by the Dominicans. Drews finished with a team-high 18 points.
The U.S. is seeking its first gold medal in the sport after winning bronze five years ago in Rio de Janeiro and silver in 2008 and 2012.
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MEDAL ALERT
Sakura Yosozumi of Japan has won the inaugural Olympic women’s park event in skateboarding, solidifying Japan’s dominance of the sport making its Olympic debut.
The silver went to Kokona Hiraki, who at 12 became Japan’s youngest Olympic medalist.
Britain’s Sky Brown prevented a Japanese medal sweep, taking the bronze.
Yosozumi won with a trick-filled first run that scored 60.09, the only score to break 60 points in the event at the Ariake Urban Sports Park.
It immediately piled on pressure on the seven other finalists, and none was able to dislodge her. Japanese skaters also took both golds in the men and women’s street events in the first week of the Tokyo Games.
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Damian Warner of Canada is leading the Olympic decathlon with 2,966 points after the first three events.
The 2016 Olympic bronze medalist is 223 points clear of fellow Canadian Pierce Lepage and 255 ahead of 2018 world junior champion Ash Moloney of Australia.
Decathlon world record holder Kevin Mayer of France, the Olympic silver medalist from Rio and world champion in 2017, is in fourth spot with 2,662 points.
Warner opened the competition by equaling his world decathlon best time of 10.12 seconds in the 100 meters and then produced an Olympic decathlon best 8.24 meters in the long jump. He had 14.80 meters in the shot put, allowing Lepage and Mayer to close the gap.
In the heptathlon, defending Olympic champion Nafissatou Thiam is leading with 2,176 points after two disciplines, 19 points clear of American Erica Bougard.
Thiam was 15th after the 100-meter hurdles but picked up 1,132 points in the high jump by clearing 1.89 meters to take the lead. Bougard moved from fourth place into second by clearing 1.86 and 2019 world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson moved from seventh to third place on 2,138 points with a best jump of 1.86.
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The International Olympic Committee says it will question two Belarus team officials who were allegedly involved in trying to remove a sprinter from the Tokyo Olympics.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams says it’s part of a disciplinary case opened “to establish the facts” in the case of sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya.
After Tsimanouskaya criticized the management of her team on social media, she says officials hustled her to the airport and trying to put her on a plane back to Belarus.
The IOC says the Belarus officials under investigation are Artur Shumak and Yuri Moisevich.
Tsimanouskaya boarded a flight to Vienna on Wednesday, though it wasn't clear if that was her final destination. Several countries offered to help her and Poland has given her a visa on humanitarian grounds because she fears her life would be threatened in Belarus.
The IOC could suspend the Belarusian national Olympic committee ahead of the closing ceremony on Sunday.
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MEDAL ALERT
American Sydney McLaughlin has broken her own world record to win the women’s 400-meter hurdles in 51.46 seconds. She edged out Dalilah Muhammad, who won silver to make it a U.S. 1-2 finish.
McLaughlin set the previous world record of 51.90 seconds in June. Muhammad, who set the world record twice in 2019 and won the world championship gold medal that year, finished in 51.58.
Femke Bol of the Netherlands took bronze in 52.03.
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A Belarusian Olympic sprinter who had a public feud with officials from her team has boarded a plane to Vienna.
It's not clear if Austria is Krystsina Tsimanouskaya's final destination. Several countries had offered to help her, and Poland has granted her a humanitarian visa.
She said in an interview with The Associated Press that officials from her team had “made it clear” she would face punishment if she returned home to an autocratic government that has relentlessly stifled any criticism.
Tsimanouskaya has said she hopes she can continue her career, but for now her safety is the priority. After she criticized the management of her team on social media, she accused officials of hustling her to the airport and trying to put her on a plane back to Belarus.
She was seen in Tokyo on Wednesday morning entering Narita International Airport surrounded by an entourage.
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Brazil is out of the men’s beach volleyball tournament at the Olympics, and Latvia can take the credit.
Latvia’s Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs beat 2016 gold medalist Alison and his partner Alvaro Filho 21-16, 21-19 on Wednesday. The Latvians knocked out the other Brazilian men’s team -- with Alison’s partner in Rio de Janeiro, Bruno Oscar Schmidt -- in the round of 16 on Monday.
Only one of the two Brazilian women’s teams has survived the quarterfinals, meaning the traditional beach volleyball power can win at most one medal in Tokyo. That will be its worst performance since the sport was added to the Summer Games in 1996.
In the other morning quarterfinal, top-seeded Anders Mol and Christian Sorum of Norway eliminated Russia. The Norwegians finished atop the qualification points list but lost to Russians Ilya Leshukov and Konstantin Semenov in the round robin.
Norway won the rematch 21-17, 21-19.
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MEDAL ALERT
Ana Marcela Cunha of Brazil won the women’s 10-kilometer marathon swimming event.
Cunha touched first in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 30.8 seconds on Wednesday morning, finishing nine-tenths of a second ahead of defending champion Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands.
Van Rouwendaal took silver in 1:59.31.7.
Kareena Lee of Australia earned bronze in 1:59.32.5.
Cunha won her first medal in her third Olympics. She was 10th five years ago in Rio de Janeiro and fifth in the 2008 Beijing Games.
American Haley Anderson finished sixth and her teammate, Ashley Twichell, was seventh.
The seven-lap course in Tokyo Bay featured a backdrop of skyscrapers, the Rainbow Bridge and the nearby floating Olympic rings.
The air temperature during the latter stages of the race was 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius), with 74% humidity that made it feel like 95 degrees (35 C).
The water temperature was about 84 degrees (29 C), under the allowable limit of 88 degrees (31 degrees C).
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