Italy’s ‘Four Ferraris’ shock relay world

TOKYO — There are some things track fans are used to: Nobody stops the Jamaican women at these Olympics and the tireless Sifan Hassan is a contender for a medal in every distance race she enters.

Other things might take some getting used to: Italy is a sprint power. It now owns the gold medal in the men’s 400meter relay to go with the shocking 100-meter gold that Marcell Jacobs won.

The Italian relay team made Jacobs a double Olympic champion Friday, as the country pulled off a stunner to equal Jacobs’ solo triumph five nights earlier. Jacobs ran the second leg of Italy’s 37.5second trip around the track, and Filippo Tortu outraced Britain’s Nethaneel MitchellBlake to the line.

Tortu, who was slightly behind at the changeover, dipped first for a 0.01-second victory.

“We are four Ferraris,” Tortu said.

Okinawan golden

Roughly eight centuries ago, a new martial art called karate came into being on a subtropical island now known as Okinawa. On Friday, an Okinawan won the first Olympic gold medal in men’s kata, one of the modern sport’s premier events.

“I’m very happy that I was able to make a mark in history,” said three-time world champion and now Olympic champion Ryo Kiyuna, speaking about his pride of bringing an Okinawan tradition to the wider world.

He was the first Olympic gold medalist ever from the southwestern island chain known for its sparkling blue seas and sandy beaches. But for the 31-year-old Kiyuna, there was no dramatic celebration. Later, as he accepted his gold medal and stood for the national anthem, he clutched a framed photograph of his mother, who died two years ago at 57.

Wrestling comeback

The last move of the impossible comeback was complete and Gable Dan Steveson, an American wrestler named after perhaps America’s greatest wrestler of all time, could see that there was 0.3 seconds between him and the gold medal. And all he could think was: “Ain’t no way.”

Then everything went mad.

Later, none of the wrestlers who spoke in the Makuhari Messe Hall could remember something like this happening — a wrestler down three points with less than 20 seconds remaining in the freestyle 125-kilogram gold medal match, scoring two takedowns before time ran out. And not only two takedowns, but two takedowns of someone like Georgia’s Geno Petriashvili, an Olympic bronze medalist from 2016 and a three-time world champion.

Steveson sat back on his legs, stunned. Petriashvili lay on his back in disbelief. A group of American women wrestlers watching from the hall’s steel empty stands screamed. In a warm-up room behind the stands, American coaches ran all over the mats.

And the man who had pulled off the unimaginable?

“My head was flushed with everything,” he said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’”