IN SPORTS: U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM OUT
KASHIMA, Japan — Carli Lloyd didn’t want to leave the field Monday.
Her dream of another championship had ended in a 1-0 U.S. loss to Canada in the Tokyo Olympics semifinals. And if that meant the end of an era for Lloyd and the women’s national team — which it certainly did — Lloyd wasn’t going to go until she had one long, last look around.
So she grabbed a soccer ball, dropped it on the grass near midfield and sat alone, in the middle of the hot, steamy and empty stadium, long after everyone else had left the field.
“I’m not going to lie. I miss having a normal life,” said Lloyd, one of 11 players on the U.S. team older than 30. “I miss home, my family, friends. This is what you sacrifice every four years, every five years. It’s all part of it.”
The decision she’s been dreading, her words suggested, has already been made.
“Eventually, it comes to an end,” she said. “So just try to savor every moment.”
Not just for Lloyd, who turned 39 in Japan, but for the heart of the most successful women’s soccer team in history. Kelley O’Hara will turn 33 the day before the U.S. finishes the tournament against Australia in the bronze-medal game on Thursday. Alex Morgan and Christen Press are both 32; Tobin Heath’s a year older.
How many of them will still be playing when the next Olympics open in three years?
“We don’t really have the luxury of going one year at a time. We kind of have to think in four-year blocks,” said Megan Rapinoe, who turned 36 last month. “And I haven’t thought about that.”
Nor has Becky Sauerbrunn, 36.
“It’s way, way too early for the reflection question,” she said.
But that question won’t go away, not with the way the Americans played in Japan.
They came to the Olympics riding a 44-game unbeaten streak, then lost twice in less than two weeks.
They rolled through the last two Women’s World Cups without a loss, becoming the first team of either gender to win consecutive world championships since World War II. But an aging core melted in the punishing summer heat and humidity of the Japanese summer.
“Football always needs joy. That’s when the game is really played at its best,” Rapinoe said with a forced smile. “I feel like
we haven’t been able to do that; everything has just been a little bit of a struggle.
“I certainly love playing with a big smile on my face much more than the opposite. I think everybody else does as well.”
Instead, the team stumbled, grim-faced, through the worst group stage ever by a U.S. women’s squad in a major world championship, then needed a superb effort by goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher, who saved three penalty kicks — and, briefly, her team’s tournament — to get past the Netherlands in the quarterfinals.
Naeher wasn’t around to face the penalty shot that decided Monday’s game, leaving in the 30th minute with a hyperextended right knee. Her replacement, Adrianna Franch, was playing in just her seventh game for the U.S., her first in a championship. And while her teammates did their best to protect her — Franch faced just one shot from open play — she was on her own when Jessie Fleming strode to the spot in the 75th minute.
Jade Carey wins gold in floor exercise for the U.S. at the Tokyo Olympics
TOKYO — Everyone tried to lighten the mood after the darkest moment of Jade Carey’s gymnastics career. Her father told her to let it go. Teammate Simone Biles, very familiar with unexpected setbacks, said there was nothing to do but flourish in her next routine.
By Monday morning, Brian Carey, Jade’s father who doubles as her coach, could tell by the steely assurance in his daughter’s eyes that she was ready to move on at these Tokyo Olympics from her stumble in the vault the previous day.
“I told her, ‘You might feel like yesterday was one of the worst days of your life,’ ” Brian Carey recalled, “‘but today can be one of the best days of your life.’ ”
The chance at a turnabout would come several hours later in the floor exercise. As Jade Carey commenced a routine of twists and backflips, the energy inside a nearly empty arena intensified with each perfectly executed move.
The small contingent of U.S. athletes and staff sitting in one corner roared, finally delivering a standing ovation as Carey completed her routine. She thrust an arm triumphantly into the air and waited for what seemed likely to come next.
A gold medal. Redemption. Dreams fulfilled.
Carey had it all after her score of 14.366 topped Italy’s Vanessa Ferrari (14.2) and Mai Murakami of Japan and Viktoriia Listunova of the Russian Olympic Committee, who both scored 14.166. Murakami’s medal was the first for a Japanese female gymnast in 57 years, dating to the 1964 Tokyo Games, but the bigger revival belonged to Carey.
“Coming back from a day like [Sunday],” said Carey, her first Olympic medal draped around her neck, “I’m really proud of myself for being able to put that behind me and finish with probably the best floor routine I’ve ever done in my life.”
Carey’s performance gave the Americans their third consecutive Olympic gold in the floor going back to the 2012 London Games. It also further salvaged what’s largely been an unsettling performance here for the U.S. given Biles’ withdrawal from many events, citing spatial awareness difficulties, before she announced she would compete in the balance beam finals Tuesday.
Having finished eighth in the allaround competition, Carey’s struggles deepened Sunday when she stumbled on the vault runway, saving herself from injury by somehow completing a perfunctory routine.