Dressel earns gold in stirring 100 free
In an Olympics in which many favorites have faltered, Caeleb Dressel lived up to the hype.
Dressel claimed the first individual Olympic gold medal with two furious laps of the pool Thursday, winning the 100meter freestyle over defending champ Kyle Chalmers.
As is his style, Dressel dove in and came up with the lead. He was ahead at the lone flip, and turned away the Aussie’s bid for a second straight gold.
Dressel’s winning time was an Olympic record of 47.02 seconds — sixhundredths of a second ahead of Chalmers, who had to settle for silver.
“I wasn’t worried about anything,” Dressel said. “During the race, there’s only so much you can do.”
China surprised the U.S. and Australia with a worldrecord performance in the women’s 4x200meter freestyle relay.
Stanford alum Katie Ledecky took the anchor leg for the Americans in third place, nearly two seconds behind the Chinese and also trailing the Aussies. Ledecky passed Australia’s Leah Neale and closed the gap on China’s Li Bingjie, but couldn’t catch her.
Li touched in 7 minutes, 40.33 seconds. The U.S. claimed silver in 7:40.73, Australia the bronze in 7:41.29. All three medalists broke the mark of 7:41.50 set by the Aussies at the 2019 worlds.
Zhang Yufei dominated in winning the women’s 200meter butterfly with an Olympicrecord time of 2 minutes, 3.86 seconds for China’s first gold medal in the pool. She was more than a body length ahead of two Americans, Stanford freshman Regan Smith and Hali Flickinger.
Smith, whose best stroke is the back, was thrilled to claim a medal in the fly. “I was just super surprised,” she said. “I really fought hard.”
American Bobby Finke won gold in the debut of the men’s 800meter freestyle at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre. Finke was fourth at the final flip but passed all ahead of him to win in 7 minutes, 41.87 seconds.
Izaac StubbletyCook of Australia won the 200meter breaststroke, rallying on the final lap to pass Arno Kamminga of the Netherlands in an Olympicrecord 2 minutes, 6.38 seconds. American Nic Fink finished fifth.
Tatjana Schoenmaker of South Africa flirted with the world record in the 200meter breaststroke preliminaries, clocking 2 minutes, 19.16 seconds — just 0.05 off the world mark of 2:19.11. Lilly King of the U.S. was 2.94 seconds behind at 2:22.10. King’s teammate, Annie Lazor, was fifth.
Australia’s Emma McKeon led the 100 freestyle heats in 52.13 seconds. American Abbey Weitzeil of Cal advanced.
American Michael Andrew was fastest in the 200 individual medley trials in 1:56.40. Also advancing: teammate and 400 IM winner Chase Kalisz.
Luke Greenbank of Britain was the top qualifier in the 200 backstroke at 1:54.63. Cal’s Bryce Mefford of the U.S. was third at 1:56.37.
Track and field: American worldchampion polevaulter Sam Kendricks is out after testing positive for the coronavirus. Kendricks won the bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics and took gold at the past two world championships.
3on3 basketball: The U.S. team of Stefanie Dolson, Allisha Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young won the first women’s gold in the new Olympic sport, beating the Russian Olympic Committee 1815. China beat France 1614 for the bronze medal.
Latvia’s Karlis Lasmanis drained a shot from behind the arc to seal a goldmedal, 2118 victory over the Russians in the men’s event. Serbia beat Belgium 2110 for bronze.
Basketball: Damian Lillard scored 21 points to help the U.S. men rebound from an opening loss with their first win, romping past Iran 12066.
Beach volleyball: Americans Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena beat Julian Azaad and Nicolas Capogrosso of Argentina 2119, 1821, 156 to improve to 21 in the roundrobin to earn at least one more match.
Tennis: Daniil Medvedev struggled so much in Tokyo’s heat and humidity Wednesday that at one point, the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, asked if he could continue.
“I can finish the match but I can die,” Medvedev replied.
Medvedev, seeded second, still pulled out a 62, 36, 62 win over Fabio Fognini of Italy to reach the quarterfinals.
Spain’s Paula Badosa left the court in a wheelchair after retiring from her quarterfinal match against Marketa Vondrousova with heatstroke. Organizers then announced that matches would begin at 3 p.m. instead of 11 a.m.
Serbia’s Novak Djokovic beat Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 63, 61 to keep his Golden Slam bid going. His quarterfinal opponent will be Kei Nishikori of Japan.
Gymnastics: Japan’s Daiki Hashimoto, 19, won gold in the men’s allaround, using a thrilling highbar routine during the final rotation to edge Xiao Ruoteng of China and reigning world champ Nikita Nagornyy of the Russian team.
Cycling: Primoz Roglic capped a huge month for Slovenia by winning the time trial, after the bronze won by Tour de France champion Tadej Pogecar in the road race. Roglic’s closest rival was Dutch timetrial specialist Tom Dumoulin, more than a minute behind.
Baseball: Japan, the world’s topranked team, was down 31 with two outs left before rallying to beat the Dominicans 43 to open the tournament. Diving: China’s Wang Zongyuan and Xie Siyi won men’s 3meter synchronized springboard, finishing with 467.82 points. Andrew Capobianco and Michael Hixon of the U.S. earned silver at 444.36. Hixon won silver won five years ago in Rio with a different partner.
Rugby sevens: The U.S. women opened with a 2814 win over China. The U.S. is in the same group as defending champion Australia, which beat Japan 480.
Fiji beat New Zealand 2712 to successfully defend the title it won when rugby sevens made its Olympic debut at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Argentina beat Britain 1712 for bronze. South Africa, the bronze medalist in Rio, beat the U.S. 287 in the playoff for fifth place.