Lyles sizzles in 200; Biles leads gymnasts
Noah Lyles won the 200 meters at the U.S. track and field trials in Eugene, Oregon, earning a spot on the Olympic team.
Lyles won in 19.74 seconds, the best time in the world this season. He is among the favorites to win the event in Tokyo after winning the gold medal at the 2019 world championships in Doha.
Also earning spots on the team were runner-up
Kenny Bednarek, who finished in a personal best 19.78, and teenager Erriyon Knighton, who was third in 19.84.
Knighton, 17, is the youngest male track Olympian since Jim Ryun in 1964.
The trio were the final Americans to earn spots in the Olympics across 28 sports.
Sydney McLaughlin set a world record in the 400-meter hurdles in 51.90 seconds.
McLaughlin bested the record of 52.16 set by second-place finisher
Dalilah Muhammad, who crossed in 52.42.
Anna Cockrell was third in 53.70.
Oregon freshman Cole Hocker won the 1,500 meters, but it was uncertain whether he’ll go to Tokyo because he hadn’t run the Olympic standard.
Hocker finished in a personal best 3 minutes, 35.28 seconds, edging former Oregon standout
Matthew Centrowitz Jr., who finished in 3:35.34.
Hocker just missed out on the Olympic standard by .28 seconds, so now he’ll wait for a ruling on whether he can compete.
Centrowitz makes his third Olympic team. He won gold at the 2016 Brazil Games.
Teenager Athing Mu won the women’s 800 meters. The 19-year-old Mu stumbled early in the race, but recovered and pulled away from the pack down the final stretch to finish in 1 minute, 56.07 seconds. It was a meet record and the best time in the world this season.
JuVaughn Harrison won the long jump after taking the high jump crown earlier.
Harrison becomes the first American to make it in both the high jump and long jump at one Olympics since Jim Thorpe in 1912, according to historian Bill Mallon.
The LSU product jumped a personal-best 27 feet, 9 inches (8.47 meters) to win the long jump.
Annie Kunz won the heptathlon competition with a strong performance in the final event, the 800 meters, on a day when the
race was moved to later due to the extreme heat.
Taliyah Brooks withdrew from the competition after being carted off the field in a wheelchair earlier in the afternoon as the temperature reached 108 degrees on the track.
Kunz finished the 800 in 2 minutes, 15.24 seconds to accumulate a personal-best 6,703 points to earn a spot at the Tokyo Games. She edged 2016 Olympic qualifier
Kendell Williams (6,683 points). Erica Bougard was third.
Gymnastics: Reigning
world and Olympic champion Simone Biles will headline the U.S. women's gymnastics team in Japan, clinching one of the automatic berths with another easy victory at the Olympic Trials on Sunday night.
Well, maybe not that easy. The 24-year-old found herself in tears at one point during an uncharacteristically shaky — by her impeccable standards — performance.
Her bars were uneven. She fell off the beam. Stepped out of bounds on floor exercise. While her two-day total of 118.098 was more than two points ahead of Olympic teammate Sunisa Lee, who actually posted a higher all-around score than
Biles during the finals.
Lee, Jordan Chiles and
Grace McCallum will join Biles on the fourwoman Olympic team.
MyKayla Skinner ,an alternate in 2016, was awarded the “plus-1” specialist spot.
Lee, who will be the first Hmong American to compete at the Olympics, is surging. Hindered by an ankle injury that slowed her during the spring and left her limping at times during the national championships earlier this month, Lee may be the best gymnast on the planet not named Biles. The 18-year-old from Minnesota is a wonder on the uneven bars.
Baseball: Host Japan will open the baseball tournament against the Dominican Republic at Fukushima on July 28, and Mike Scioscia’s U.S. team will start two days later against Israel at Yokohama. The U.S., in Group B, also plays defending champ South Korea on July 31. The U.S. has not yet announced its roster; Israel’s team is expected to include former major-leaguers
Kinsler and