The United States women’s basketball team started their chase for another gold medal on July 29 with a dominant 102–76 win over Japan in their first game of the Olympic tournament.
Team USA’s women’s basketball team has won seven consecutive gold medals in the Summer Olympics, with a bronze in 1992 breaking up nine gold medals overall. The Americans have also won the last four FIBA Women’s World Cup tournaments, most recently placing first in 2022.
Japan took the silver at home in 2020, the only medal their country has won in women’s basketball in the Summer Olympics. They placed ninth in the two most recent FIBA Women’s World Cup events. The Americans had a significant advantage coming in.
Team USA bested Great Britain in the quarterfinal women's rugby match 17–7.
The team advances to a semifinal match on Tuesday against New Zealand.
Nick Itkin won 15–12 in the bronze bout against Kazuki Iimura of Japan.
Team USA also won two medals in women's foil fencing Sunday, after American fencers Lauren Scruggs and Lee Keifer faced off, taking the silver and gold respectively.
Tatjana Smith (nee Schoenmaker) of South Africa won gold in the 100-meter backstroke, an event she won silver at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
“I’m embracing it and I love that part of life, and it makes you realise swimming is just a season and there’s different seasons. I’m already enjoying another season with my swimming,” she said in a Team South Africa interview ahead of the games.
David Popovici of Romania won the gold in the 200-meter freestyle, the first Romanian to win a gold medal in this event. He was the favorite to win, having set himself apart from the pack with his times leading up to the finals.
Matthew Richards of Great Britain won silver, and Luke Hobson of Team USA won bronze, all within hundredths of a second.
American fencer Nick Itkin lost to Filippo Macchi of Italy 15-11 in the foil fencing semifinal and will next face Kazuki Iimura of Japan for the bronze.
Macchi will face Cheung Ka Long of Hong Kong for the gold. Cheung took gold in the last Olympics and will be defending his medal.
Summer McIntosh of Canada won her first gold medal in the 400-meter medley. She started strong and widened her lead with each lap.
McIntosh had already won a silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle earlier in the games, making this her second medal this Olympics.
Team USA took the bronze medal in men's team gymnastics, the first time the team has stood on the podium since taking the bronze in the 2008 Olympic Games.
Japan, a seven-time Olympic champion in the event, took the gold. China won silver.
Canada's Christa Deguchi took the gold medal in women’s lightweight judo, the country's first gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
Japan's Haruka Funakubo and France's Sarah-Léonie Cysique tied for bronze.
Team USA's Jagger Eaton and Nyjah Huston took the silver and bronze medals, respectively, in the men's street skateboarding event.
The U.S. women's field hockey team drew 1-1 with Spain, putting Team USA in fourth place.
“Anything can happen in tournament hockey, I think that that excites us,” captain Amanda Golini told reporters ahead of the games.
Team USA’s next game is against Australia on Wednesday.
Tome Pidcock successfully defended his Tokyo gold medal performance in Paris on Monday after winning the men’s cross-country mountain biking in a thrilling race to the finish at Élancourt Hill.
The British cyclist’s gold medal defending performance was labelled as a “sensational ride against the odds” by his team.
Mr. Pidcock’s race was in danger of unravelling when he suffered a flat front tyre on the fourth of eight laps, shortly after he had taken control of the 35-kilometre race with an attack which split the pack.
Adam Peaty tested positive for COVID-19 just minutes after narrowly missing the gold in the men's 100-meter breaststroke on Sunday, according to Team Great Britain on Monday.
Peaty tied with Team USA's Nic Fink for silver, both finishing .02 seconds behind Italy's Nicolo Martinenghi.
Team USA's Chase Budinger and Miles Evans beat France's Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat in their first beach volleyball game in two sets, 21-14 and 21-11.
Two-time gold medalist Rafael Nadal is out of the running for a medal in men's singles, but still in the running for men's doubles with Carlos Alcaraz.
"It's a beautiful thing," he said, calling teammate Alcaraz one of the best players of the moment.
"We are in different moments in our careers," Nadal told reporters after his defeat by Novak Djokovic. "It's hard to perform at the level that I used to."
Several telecommunication lines in France have been targeted by vandals, causing network outages in some regions, officials said.
Police said that fiber optic cables in electrical cabinets had been cut.
In a win for Serbia, Novak Djokovic defeated Rafael Nadal in the pair's 60th match against each other of their careers.
This was Djokovic's 36th victory against Nadal at 6-1 and 6-4.
Nadal's first break point came more than one hour into the second-round match, but it wasn't enough for a complete comeback.
Nic Fink sat down with celebrated Olympian Michael Phelps and the Today Show after his silver win in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke, describing just how close the race was.
“It was pretty surreal,” he said.
“A lot of times it’s almost cliché to say it’s a fingernail touch, but it actually was last night. I was a fingernail away from first but also a fingernail away from being off the podium, so it almost seems like it was meant to be second. And sharing the podium with Nico and Adam was really cool, too.”
Two days after serving as a torch bearer for the 2024 Summer Olympics, Rafael Nadal won his opening singles match to set up a showdown with a familiar opponent. Nadal defeated Hungarian Marton Fucsovics 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 in the first round at Paris 2024 to book a matchup with Novak Djokovic in the second round. Djokovic won his opener on Saturday 6-0, 6-1 over Matthew Ebden of Great Britain.
The Nadal vs. Djokovic history couldn’t be tighter as Djokovic has 30 head-to-head wins while Nadal has 29. The 60 meetings between the two are the most ever between two men in the Open Era, which began in 1968 when the Grand Slam tournaments first allowed professionals to enter the events after previously only allowing amateurs.
