Tokyo Olympics Digest: United States ‘A-Team’ strikes gold in beach volleyball
Americans April Ross and Alix Klineman beat the Australian duo of Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy in two sets at the Tokyo Games to take gold in the women’s beach volleyball tournament.
Ross, a three-time Olympian, now has a complete medal set, having won bronze at the 2016 Rio Games and silver in 2012 in London.
After the match, Ross paid tribute to Klineman, who switched to beach volleyball in part because she didn’t make the indoor team for Rio.
“I’m just really proud of how hard we have worked over the years, and how Alix dove so hard into beach volleyball and studied the game and worked her butt off, and so she deserves this,” she told ESPN.
Nicknamed the “A-Team” due to their initials, Ross and Klineman were cheered on by Mr. T, the actor famous for his role as the gold-chain wearing strongman B.A. Baracus in the 1980s television series that shares a name.
The gold topped off an almost perfect Olympic tournament for the pair, who dropped just one set over the course of seven dominant performances.
Other gold medals
Poland’s Dawid Tomala dominated the 50-kilometer race walk at the Tokyo Games to take an astonishing gold unchallenged in only his second attempt at the longest distance. Tomala took the lead by the 30-kilometer mark to triumph with 3:50:08, and held a Polish flag for the final kilometer.
In the heavyweight boxing final (81-91 kilogramms), Cuba’s Julio la Cruz, who was shot during a robbery just a few years ago, won his second Olympic gold with victory over Russia’s Muslim Gadzhimagomedov on unanimous points. He adds the Tokyo title to his Rio 2016 light-heavyweight crown.
Germany update
Twenty-nine years after current national team coach Ronald Weigel’s bronze coup at the Olympics in Barcelona, Jonathan Hilbert wrote his own chapter in the history of German walkers by taking silver in the final 50-kilometer race walk. The event is being dropped for the Paris 2024 Games in favor of a new mixed-gender event.
Other news from Tokyo 2020
Two Belarusian coaches who were involved in the effort to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to return to Minsk have been stripped of their Games accreditation and sent home by the International Olympic Committee.
COVID-19 cases continue to rise ahead of the closing weekend the Organizing Committee announced on Friday. In its daily information brief, it was confirmed that 29 people have tested positive for the virus, two less than Day 13 which set a new high since the start of the Games.
In total 382 people in connection with the Olympic Games have been infected.
jt (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)
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