Olympics Latest: Caeleb Dressel wins gold in 100m freestyle
TOKYO (AP) — The Latest on the Tokyo Olympics, which are taking place under heavy restrictions after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic:
MEDAL ALERTS
• Living up to the hype, American swimmer Caeleb Dressel has claimed the first individual Olympic gold medal of his career.
Dressel held off the defending Olympic champion, Australia’s Kyle Chalmers, with a furious sprint to the wall. The winning time was an Olympic record of 47.02 seconds.
• China has claimed its first gold medal at the Olympic pool.
Zhang Yufei turned in a dominating performance to win the women’s 200-meter butterfly with an Olympic-record time of 2 minutes, 3.86 seconds. She was more than a body length ahead of the pair of Americans, Regan Smith and Hali Flickinger.
• Italian tennis player Fabio Fognini has apologized for yelling at himself with a homophobic slur during a loss at the Tokyo Games.
Fognini used the offensive Italian words repeatedly during the three-set defeat to Russian athlete Daniil Medvedev in the third round on Wednesday.
• Izaac Stubblety-cook of Australia has won the 200-meter breaststroke at the Olympic pool in Tokyo.
Stubblety-cook rallied on the final lap to pass Arno Kamminga of the Netherlands, who went out fast and tried to hold on. The winning time was an Olympic record of 2 minutes, 6.38 seconds as the Aussies captured their fifth gold of the swimming competition, matching the powerful American team.
• Italy’s Valentina Rodini and Federica Cesarini have surged over the final 50 meters to snatch the gold medal in the women’s lightweight double sculls.
• American beach volleyball players Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil dispatched Kenya in just 25 minutes, the fastest women’s match since the Olympics adopted their current format.
The U.S. pair beat Brackcides Khadambi and Gaudencia Makokha 21-8, 21-6 to improve to 2-0 and almost certainly clinch a spot in the knockout round of 16. They have one match remaining, against Brazil on Saturday.
The match was the fastest since the international volleyball federation adopted the rally scoring and best-of-three sets format in 2002.
• Ireland’s duo of Fintan Mccarthy and Paul O’donovan held off a late charge from Germany’s Jonathan Rommelmann and Jason Osborne to win the gold medal in men’s lightweight double sculls.
• New Zealand’s Grace Pendergrast and Kerri Gowler have won gold in the rowing women’s pair.
The Kiwi duo won the world championship in 2019 and were favored to grab victory in Tokyo. They are just the third non-european team to win the Olympic event and the first since 1996.
• Croatian brothers Martin and Valent Sinkovic have dominated the men’s pair in Olympic rowing, cruising to victory in a race they led from the start.
Romania’s duo of Marius Cozmiuc and Ciprian Tudosas won silver. Denmark’s Frederic Vystavel and Joachim Sutton won bronze.