Current time in Tokyo: Aug. 8, 8:19 a.m.
Here’s what you need to know:The U.S. women’s basketball team will face Japan in their gold medal game on Sunday.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
TOKYO — The final day of the Tokyo Olympics begins early, with the men’s marathon at 7 a.m. on Sunday, Tokyo time (Saturday at 6 p.m. Eastern time). The race will be held in the northern city of Sapporo in an effort to avoid the worst of Tokyo’s summer heat.
The United States, which trails China 36-38 in the gold medal race, still has a chance to catch up, with several championships on the line. The U.S. fell behind when it did not win enough golds in sports it usually dominates, like women’s soccer, gymnastics and track and field.
But several gold medal games remain.
The U.S. women’s basketball team has been cruising toward the gold so far. Its final opponent, in a surprise, is Japan. The gold medal game is at 11:30 a.m. in Tokyo (10:30 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday).
Two hours later, the U.S. women’s indoor volleyball team will also play for gold against Brazil.
In the Tokyo afternoon, two American boxers will fight for gold: Keyshawn Davis at lightweight and Richard Torrez Jr. at super heavyweight.
And when it’s all wrapped up, the closing ceremony, again without fans, starts at 8 p.m. in Tokyo, 7 a.m. Eastern time.
Latest
Medal
Count
›
Total
United States
36
39
33
108
China
38
31
18
87
Russian Olympic Committee
20
26
23
69
Britain
20
21
22
63
Japan
27
12
17
56
TOKYO — The United States men’s basketball team lost to France in the group stages, but beat that team when it counted most, on Saturday in the gold medal game, 87-82. Kevin Durant had 29 points.
A third-inning solo shot by Munetaka Murakami of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows was all Japan ended up needing in its 2-0 victory over the U.S. in the baseball gold medal game.
In track, the United States swept the 4×400-meter relays, with Allyson Felix winning medal No. 11, surpassing Carl Lewis for the American record in the sport.
The U.S. men followed suit by winning their 4×400-meter race, two days after they failed to make the final of the 4×100 relay thanks to a flubbed baton pass.
Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands added the 10,000 meters to her earlier victory in the 5,000. Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway won the men’s 1,500.
Nelly Korda, fresh off a win at the Women’s P.G.A. Championship, won the women’s golf event, completing an American sweep of golf at these Games.
Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya won the women’s marathon, with Molly Seidel of the United States getting a bronze.
The U.S. women’s water polo team won its third straight gold medal, defeating Spain.
Gold medals went to Brazil in men’s soccer and to France in men’s handball and men’s volleyball.
Russia won the artistic (formerly synchronized) swimming group gold.
And Jessica Springsteen and the U.S. show jumping team won a silver medal.
Neeraj Chopra won the men’s javelin on Saturday.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
India has at last won gold in track and field at the Olympics.
Neeraj Chopra won the men’s javelin on Saturday with a throw of 87.58 meters, nearly a foot farther than the silver medalist, Jakub Vadlejch of Czech Republic.
“It feels unbelievable,” Chopra said, according to Reuters. “This is our first Olympic medal for a very long time, and in athletics it is the first time we have gold, so it’s a proud moment for me and my country.”
The gold medal is India’s first at the Tokyo Games and only its second ever at a Summer Games. Abhinav Bindra, who won the 10-meter air rifle competition in Beijing in 2008, was India’s only other Olympic gold medalist in an individual competition.
In 2018, Chopra won gold at the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games, but an elbow injury that required surgery caused him to miss nearly a year of competition. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted his comeback.
“Take a bow, young man! You have fulfilled a nation’s dream. Thank you!” Bindra wrote on Twitter. “Also, welcome to the club — a much needed addition!”
India, the world’s second-most-populous country, has been trying to improve its underwhelming Olympic game, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been keen to use sports to raise its global profile.
Modi has been tweeting congratulations to several Indian athletes during the Games, including Chopra. “History has been scripted at Tokyo!” Modi wrote. “The young Neeraj has done exceptionally well. He played with remarkable passion and showed unparalleled grit.”
After India’s substandard performance at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro — one silver and one bronze — the government began funneling money to a sports bureaucracy that was underfunded for decades and stained by corruption. Private ventures stepped in, training elite athletes whose upward trajectory they might be able to harness. And state money has started to trickle to grass-roots sports, too.
There has been some jubilation in India during these Games, where it has won seven medals. It defeated Germany to win bronze in men’s field hockey, the team’s first medal in that sport in more than 40 years. The women’s hockey team came close, falling to Britain for bronze.
The badminton star P.V. Sindhu won a bronze medal in women’s singles badminton, becoming the first Indian woman and only the second Indian athlete to win two individual Olympic medals after winning a silver in Rio.
Aditi Ashok narrowly missed a medal in women’s golf, losing out on a bronze by a single shot.
India’s other medals came in weight lifting, wrestling and boxing.
Some countries provide cash rewards to Olympians who earn medals.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
TOKYO — After winning a gold medal at the Summer Olympics, the U.S. wrestler Tamyra Mensah-Stock had big plans for the bonus money that comes with it: buying her mother a $30,000 food truck.
Tamerlan Bashaev, 25, a Russian judoka who claimed a bronze medal, wants to use his money to get married and go on a honeymoon. Andrea Proske, a rower who helped Canada win its first gold medal in the women’s eight since 1992, can’t wait to take her mother on vacation to London.
“I haven’t been able to see her,” said Proske, 35, who will get $20,000 Canadian dollars, roughly $16,000 U.S. dollars. “We’ve all been really in our own bubble. So just to be able to hug my mom for the first time since we return post Covid is going to be special.”
Winning an Olympic medal is often the crowning achievement of an athlete’s career. Most Olympians, though, aren’t multimillionaire athletes like Naomi Osaka, Rory McIlroy or Kevin Durant, so competing at this elite level can be a financial struggle.
But many Olympic medalists are leaving Tokyo with more than just prizes dangling from their necks. They are given an extra behind-the-scenes boost in the form of bonuses. Winning pads the wallet nicely in certain countries — a fact that sparks some awe and even a little envy among the medalists.
Some of the bonuses are substantial: Singapore’s $1 million in local currency (roughly $740,000 in the United States) for a gold medal is the largest known reward. Some are more modest: A United States medalist receives $37,500 for gold, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze. Other bonuses are nonexistent, such as those for medalists from Britain, New Zealand and Norway.
Credit…James Hill for The New York Times
The first task for Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 Olympic organizing committee, is to figure out how to plan an event for which preparations are likely to be affected by a pandemic now well into its second year.
Estanguet brought dozens of staff members to Japan to shadow organizers of the Tokyo Games — perhaps the most complicated, strangest Olympics in history — and to learn how to take a layered plan years in the making and rewrite it on the fly.
“Nobody knows what will happen with this pandemic,” said Estanguet, a three-time Olympic champion in canoe slalom, “so we have to be ready for any kind of scenario.”
At the Tokyo Games, he and his colleagues have visited stadiums and arenas where some of the world’s finest athletes have performed without spectators. He has met with some officials to discuss the finer points of biosecurity, and then sat down with others to learn about the successes — and failures — of bubble environments.
“The learnings of here is that it’s feasible to organize the Games even with this kind of situation,” Estanguet said. “So we are here to learn.”
Estanguet said the Paris officials would remain in Tokyo for further talks after the Games end on Sunday, and then do the same sort of shadowing program with organizers of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, where restrictions on movement and health protocols are likely to be even more stringent than they have been in Tokyo.
Yet Estanguet remains hopeful that the pandemic will be something for the history books by the time the Summer Games arrive in France.
“We will look at all the measures they put in place here, but we are still working on our Plan A,” he said. “I want my team first to be at the best level with Plan A.”
That plan is firmly underway. A sponsorship target of one billion euros has just passed the halfway mark, and the keen interest of both France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has already helped clear administrative hurdles.
Estanguet pointed out that the government had adopted a strategy — built around the Olympics — that for the first time requires every primary school in France to set aside 30 minutes a day for physical activity. That, Estanguet said, was an example of the benefits of the Games, already in place three years before the opening ceremony.
Such legacies have been promised by hosts before, of course, only to fizzle out. Instead, the Games have often been followed by recriminations over costs and stories of expensive venues fallen into disuse. Estanguet refused to predict whether Paris would meet its own set of lofty promises, but said the conditions were in place to do so.
“I will not guarantee you,” he said, “but everything is put in place for this new model.”
Richard Torrez Jr., right, has a chance to win gold.Credit…Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
Here are some highlights of the U.S. broadcast schedule on Saturday evening and overnight. All times are Eastern and subject to network changes.
TRACK AND FIELD Replays of a flurry of finals begin airing at 8 p.m. on NBC. Events include the women’s high jump; the women’s 10,000 meters, with Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands pulling off an extraordinary feat; and the men’s javelin throw, which gave India its first track and field gold medal.
SOCCER Brazil beat Spain in extra time to repeat as the Olympic men’s soccer champion. The gold medal match gets a replay on CNBC at 8 p.m.
VOLLEYBALL Serbia’s women’s volleyball team faces South Korea in the bronze medal match airing live at 8 p.m. on USA.
On the American team, players range in age from 24 to 34 and have a mix of experience. Only four of them have played at an Olympics, while eight of them are new to the Summer Games. They will reach for gold as the U.S. takes on Brazil on Sunday; the game airs live on USA at 12:30 a.m.
WATER POLO The U.S. women’s team grabbed its third consecutive Olympic gold medal in a 14-5 rout of Spain. You can watch the action in a replay at 9:30 p.m. on NBCSN.
RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS Live coverage of the women’s group all-around finals is on USA at 10 p.m.
BASKETBALL Brittney Griner, Sue Bird and the rest of the U.S. women’s team will make their 11th appearance in a gold medal game on Saturday night when they take on Japan in the final. The game will be broadcast live at 10:30 p.m. on NBC.
BOXING CNBC will carry a series of gold medal bouts in a range of weight classes. Coverage begins at 1 a.m. and includes fights featuring two Americans: the lightweight Keyshawn Davis and the super heavyweight Richard Torrez Jr.
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