Olympics Live Updates: McLaughlin Sets New Record in 400m Hurdles – The New York Times

TOKYO — Sydney McLaughlin recently said that “iron sharpens iron” when it comes to her relationship with Dalilah Muhammad. They are the preeminent practitioners of their craft, the two fastest women ever to run the 400-meter hurdles.

Few events were more highly anticipated at the Tokyo Games than the renewal of their rivalry on Wednesday at Olympic Stadium.

It was safe to assume that something extraordinary would happen, and McLaughlin delivered, breaking her own world record to win her first Olympic gold.

McLaughlin finished in 51.46 seconds. Muhammad ran the fastest time of her life to take the silver medal in 51.58 seconds, and Femke Bol of the Netherlands was third.

The major contenders Sky Brown of Britain and Kokona Hiraki of Japan are bidding for gold in the park skateboard competition on Wednesday. If either wins, she would achieve another distinction: the youngest-ever Olympic gold medalist.

Or would she?

The current accepted youngest gold medalist is Marjorie Gestring, a 13-year-old American diver who won the springboard competition in 1936. Her record was threatened by Momiji Nishiya of Japan, a 13-year-old who won the street skateboard competition last week. But Nishiya was about two months older than Gestring was at the time of her gold.

However, either Hiraki, 12, or Brown, who is 13 but younger than Gestring was, would break the record.

The youngest medalist of any color was Dimitrios Loundras, a Greek who at age 10 in 1896 won a bronze medal in team gymnastics

But there’s one possible snag to Brown or Hiraki getting the record.

At the Paris Games of 1900, a Dutch rowing pair recruited a local French boy to be their coxswain. After they won, he disappeared into the crowd. Though several candidates have been put forward, his identity has never been discovered and remains one of the greatest mysteries in Olympic history.

The consensus is that he was 10 or younger, but despite the avid interest of Olympics researchers for years, that simply isn’t known for sure.

Skateboarding was added to the Olympics with the hope that it would instill the Summer Games with a jolt of youthful rebellion. One way it has been doing that in Tokyo is by starring true youth.

While the street competition wrapped up last week, with Yuto Horigome and Momiji Nishiya of Japan winning golds, women’s park will be held Wednesday (Tuesday night in the U.S.), and men’s park will follow on Thursday at Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo.

Who are some skateboarders to watch?

The youngest athletes in the women’s park event have reasonable expectations to win medals.

Kokona Hiraki of Japan is 12 (she will turn 13 a few weeks after the Olympics), but two bigger favorites are 13-year-old Sky Brown of Britain and 15-year-old Misugu Okamoto of Japan.

Beyond their diminutive sizes and flying acrobatics in the bowl, Brown and Okamoto are a study in contrasts. Brown is the effervescent daughter of a British father and Japanese mother, who grew up mostly in Japan and now lives mostly in California. Her smile will earn her fans in at least three countries.

Okamoto is a quiet and straight-faced competitor, the best park skater of the past couple of years, leading a deep Japanese contingent that may capture more medals in skateboarding than any other country.

Others are likely to be gobbled up mostly by the United States and Brazil. That is the other thing that skateboarding promises besides youth — the likelihood of medalists from four continents and a broad range of diversity and personalities.

Who are some of the other stars?

Men’s park is a wide-open contest that promises high-flying acrobatics, perfect for television. American talent runs deep: Heimana Reynolds, ranked No. 1 in the world, No. 2 Cory Juneau and Zion Wright (from Hawaii, California and Florida, respectively) could each win a medal — or none at all. A trio from Brazil might interfere, as could maybe Oskar Rozenberg of Sweden.

Rune Glifberg of Denmark will get attention because, at 46, he looks like most everyone else’s dad. He won an X Games medal in 1995, before most Olympic skateboarders were born.

What is the difference between street and park?

If you watch snowboarding at the Winter Olympics, think of street and park a little like slopestyle and halfpipe — variations in the setting that feature slightly different types of acrobatics.

While street is a playground of stairs, rails and short ramps, meant to simulate something like a schoolyard, park is meant to evoke a swimming pool. It is a deep and unsymmetrical bowl of steep drops and contours. Athletes will navigate it in a single nonstop stretch for 45 seconds, or until they fall. They will launch and spin high over the bowl’s lip and drop back into the pool to gather speed to do it again. A panel of judges will score each athlete’s three runs, and the best score is the only one that counts.

In both street and park, the fields of 20 men and 20 women (featuring no more than three per country in each discipline and gender) will each be reduced to eight finalists, who will come back later in the day and start over again.

Here are some highlights of U.S. broadcast coverage on Tuesday evening. All times are Eastern.

GOLF NBC Golf airs the first round of play in the women’s tournament live at 6:30 p.m.

TRACK AND FIELD Coverage begins at 8 p.m. on USA Network, with highlights including a replay of the women’s 200-meter and 800-meter races. The men’s 110-meter hurdles semifinals will be broadcast live starting at 10 p.m., and the highly anticipated women’s 400-meter hurdles final starts at 10:30 p.m. Heats for the decathlon, heptathlon and men’s javelin will be held.

WATER POLO The U.S. women’s team faces Canada in a quarterfinal match that will be replayed on NBCSN at 8 p.m. The U.S. men play Spain in a quarterfinal game at 2 a.m. on CNBC.

GYMNASTICS NBC will air replays of the men’s horizontal bar final and the women’s beam final starting at 9 p.m.

SOCCER The men’s teams from Mexico and Brazil face off in a semifinal game replayed at 9 p.m. on NBCSN.

SKATEBOARDING The women’s park competition kicks off at 9 p.m. on CNBC, with the finals airing live at 11:30 p.m.

WRESTLING Men compete in the round of 16 and quarterfinal matches for freestyle in the 57-kilogram and 86-kilogram weight classes. Women face off in the 57-kilogram class for freestyle. Coverage starts at 10 p.m. on the Olympic Channel.

BASKETBALL The N.B.A. superstar Kevin Durant leads the United States men’s team against Spain, with Pau Gasol, at 10:45 p.m. on USA Network. The women’s team, featuring Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, plays Australia at 12:40 a.m. on USA Network in a live broadcast.

BASEBALL The U.S. team faces the Dominican Republic in an elimination game airing live at 12:15 a.m. on CNBC.

On Sunday, Raven Saunders won a silver medal in the shot-put at the Tokyo Games. On Tuesday, NBC reported that her mother had died in Orlando, Fla., where she had gone to attend an Olympic watch party for her daughter.

Saunders called her mother, Clarissa Saunders, her “number one guardian angel” in a message on Twitter.

Herbert Johnson, Raven Saunders’s longtime coach, confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post. He said that Clarissa Saunders and Raven’s sister, Tanzy, had gone from Charleston, S.C., the Saunders family’s hometown, to Orlando to watch Raven compete in the Olympics.

Raven Saunders did not disappoint. Sporting hair dyed green on the right and purple on the left and a mask that was a nod either to the Joker or the Hulk (her nickname), she defeated all competitors but Gong Lijiao of China.

Saunders, 25, brought attention to her feat, dancing and singing “Celebration” afterward and later, on the medals podium, crossing her arms in the shape of an X, a gesture she said was “for oppressed people.”

“Not being there is a bummer,” Clarissa Saunders said of not being able to be with her daughter in Tokyo, The State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C., reported. “But hey, we’re cheering from here … and she knows we’re here cheering for her.”

Saunders, who finished fifth in the shot-put in the 2016 Rio Games, has publicly praised her mother for her support. In an Instagram post on Mother’s Day, Saunders said of her mother: “You’ve shown me what strength is and for that I can push through anything. You’ve shown me relentlessness and for that I’ve learned determination.”

Mayor John Tecklenburg of Charleston called Clarissa Saunders “Raven’s strongest supporter.”

“On behalf of the citizens of Charleston, we pray for Raven and her family, and join them in grieving this unimaginable loss,” Mr. Tecklenburg said in a statement.

TOKYO — After dropping out of the gymnastics team event after a single vault, then passing on the all-around and three event finals because of mental health issues, Simone Biles made a dramatic return to competition on Tuesday night in her last opportunity, the balance beam. Biles had a strong routine, but finished third behind Guan Chenchen and Tang Xijing of China.

The United States men’s basketball team shook off a potentially dangerous quarterfinal opponent, Spain, with a 95-81 victory. Kevin Durant scored 29 for the U.S.

In track, Athing Mu, the 19-year-old who was already electrifying track fans, stamped herself as a star with a front-running win in the women’s 800 meters to become the first American to win the event since 1968.

Elaine Thompson-Herah won the 200 meters to add to her gold in the 100, becoming the first woman to achieve a “double-double” in Olympic track and field for repeating her victories from the same events in Rio in 2016.

Karsten Warholm of Norway set a world record in the 400-meter hurdles. Malaika Mihambo of Germany beat the American Brittney Reese in the triple jump.

The American beach volleyball pair of April Ross and Alix Klineman advanced to the semifinal.

Tamyra Mensah-Stock won the U.S.’s first wrestling gold medal of the Games, becoming the first Black woman to win wrestling gold. Duke Ragan, the U.S. men’s featherweight boxer, advanced to the final with a 4-1 win, clinching at least a silver medal.

CHIBA, Japan — Either way on Tuesday night, Tamyra Mensah-Stock knew there would be a first.

Since women’s wrestling was added to the Summer Olympics in 2004, a Black woman had never won the top prize. But in the light heavyweight gold medal match at Makuhari Messe Hall, Mensah-Stock, a Texas native whose father came to the United States from Ghana at 30, was going up against Blessing Oborududu of Nigeria.

“Oooooh, it was awesome,” Mensah-Stock said afterward with her usual zeal and earnestness.

“Oh my gosh, look at us representing,” she added later. “And I’m like, if one of us wins, we’re making history. You’re making history, I’m making history, we’re making history. It’s fantastic. It meant a lot. I’m so proud of Blessing. I was looking at her, ‘Dang, she’s killing it.’ But I can kill it, too.”

And Mensah-Stock, 28, certainly did, dominating her opponents throughout the Tokyo Games and beating Oborududu, 32, by a score of 4-1 to become the second American woman to win a wrestling gold medal after Helen Maroulis in 2016.

Asked about the feat after the match, she said: “Young women are going to see themselves in a number of ways. And they’re going to look up there and go: ‘I can do that. I can see myself.’”

Then Mensah-Stock signaled toward her head, saying: “Look at this natural hair. Come on, man! I made sure I brought my puffballs out so they could know that you can do it, too.”

Serving as a symbol to others has long been on Mensah-Stock’s mind. Back home in Katy, Texas, she started wrestling in 10th grade after she was bullied in track and field, her sport of choice. She reluctantly switched to wrestling at the behest of her twin sister, a wrestler, but soon found that the sport not only unlocked her athletic ability but also helped her develop confidence.

Mensah-Stock said she wanted other young women, perhaps those who felt as she once did, to see that “you can be silly, you can have fun, and you can be strong, you can be tough and you can be a wrestler.”

In her first year wrestling, Mensah-Stock finished second in the state championships but knew more was to come. She told a friend that they would be Olympians one day. In 2016, she made it to the Rio Games, but only as a practice partner for her teammates when she failed to secure a spot in the competition.

“From the very beginning, I knew I could get here,” she said.

Although a Black woman hadn’t won an Olympic gold in wrestling before, Mensah-Stock rattled off the names of Black wrestlers who had achieved so much before her. Among them: Toccara Montgomery, who finished seventh in the 2004 Games, and Randi Miller, who won a bronze medal in the 63-kilogram weight class in 2008.

“They paved the way for me, and I was like, ‘I know you guys could have done it, so I’m going out there and I’m going to accomplish this,’” Mensah-Stock said.

Before the gold medal match, Mensah-Stock struggled to sleep because of nerves. She said her coach, Izzy Izboinikov, made sure she ate something. Watching other wrestlers from the United States compete earlier on Tuesday made her anxiety worse.

“It wasn’t pretty,” she said.

But after the clock ran out and Mensah-Stock was the winner, she formed a heart sign with her hands and showed it to both sides of the arena. The television broadcast showed her family, watching from the United States, making the same gesture in response. From the stands, her training partner Maya Nelson clapped and shouted with so much glee that her mask couldn’t stay on.

The heart sign, she later said, was a tribute to her loved ones: her father who died in a car crash after leaving one of her high school tournaments, a tragedy that nearly led her to quit wrestling; her uncle, a former professional boxer, who died of cancer; her grandfather who also died of cancer; a late friend who was also a wrestler; her husband, her mother, her aunt, her sister and the entire country.

“I’m trying to send love to everyone,” she said.

TOKYO — First, an admission: I know very little about the sport of equestrian.

That said, I do possess a lot of knowledge about Bruce Springsteen.

I know that he initially gave up on playing the guitar his mother got for him and returned it to the shop. Too hard. I know that “The River,” his song about a teenage couple who give up on their dreams because she gets pregnant, is about his sister, who is still married to the boyfriend in the song.

I have also known for a while that Springsteen’s 29-year-old daughter, Jessica, is one of the country’s top equestrian athletes.

I have never met Bruce, though I have “seen” him many times, and I do consider him a kind of companion of the past four decades whose songs are the soundtrack of my life. We’ve driven across the country together. You know what I mean.

So I figured I owed it to my imaginary good friend to take a break from track and field to deliver an eyewitness report on his daughter and her 12-year-old bay stallion, Don Juan Van De Donkhoeve.

After several nights in the sweaty hotbox that is the cavernous interior of the Olympic Stadium, the Equestrian Park was a revelation, a breezy and serene and elegant venue of bright lights and purple and blue hues. Just after 9:30 p.m., it was time for Springsteen and Don, as she calls her stallion, to make their long-awaited Olympic debut, the 49th competitors of the night. She entered the arena with a sparkle in her eye and a wide, gleaming smile.

Horse and rider took in the grounds for a few moments as the starting bell sounded, and then they were off, bounding over jump after jump, accelerating across the water hazard in the middle of the ring. They were fast and clean until the second to last set of jumps, when Don clipped a single pole, then cruised into the finish just over a second below the optimum time of 89 seconds.

The performance put Springsteen in 24th place, with 24 competitors left. The top 30, including ties, would advance. A waiting game ensued. Every rider that put up a clean, fast ride pushed Springsteen farther down in the rankings.

In the press zone, as she dropped into a tie for 25th and then 27th, Springsteen noted how many good horses and riders were left. She seemed to know this was going the wrong way.

And yet she luxuriated in a spotlight brighter than anything she has experienced.

“It’s not only my first Olympics, it’s my first championship,” she said. “I had some jitters coming in.”

Elimination came five riders from the end, when Maikel van der Vleuten of the Netherlands posted a clean ride and sent Springsteen into a tie for 31st, one spot out of Thursday’s final. No American rider advanced. There’s fodder for a sad ballad in there somewhere.

But, Bruce, know this, too, one dad to another, from 6,700 miles away: Your girl did good.

It is not just that India was once the best team in the world in field hockey. It’s that India was once better at field hockey than any country was at nearly anything.

Those glory days had seemed to be long gone. India, which once won hockey medals at 10 straight Olympics, has not touched one since 1980. But at these Olympics, the Indian men’s hockey team has raised echoes of the great teams of the past, and the women’s team, which has never won a medal, is in contention for the first time.

The men’s gold medal bid came to an end on Tuesday with a 5-2 loss to Belgium in the semifinals, but the team still had a chance for a bronze, its best performance in a generation. The women remain alive for gold.

“Disappointed, but you don’t have time to worry about that,” said Sreejesh Parattu Raveendran, the goalkeeper known as the Wall. “Now we still have a chance to win a medal, and that’s more important for us than crying at this time.”

The golden era started in 1928 when India, which had only been playing international matches for two years, won at the Amsterdam Olympics, scoring 29 goals and giving up none. It won in 1932 and ’36 as well. Dhyan Chand, widely considered the greatest hockey player ever, was part of all three teams.

After World War II, the streak continued, with gold medals in 1948, ’52 and ’56, before India finally lost to Pakistan in 1960. It reclaimed the title in 1964.

But that was the end of the Indian dominance. The country won one more gold medal, in the boycott year of 1980, but has no medals since. India was 12th and last at the London Olympics and eighth four years ago in Rio. In a country where cricket is by far the dominant sport, hockey was becoming more and more of an antiquated curiosity.

But the 2020 India team has been a throwback to its glory days. After a 4-1 record in the group stage, India upended Britain in the quarterfinals, 3-1, to advance to the final four.

The women’s team, without any of the men’s glorious history, has similarly overachieved, shocking Australia in the quarterfinals. It plays in a semifinal of its own against Argentina on Wednesday.

“This will be a very big, big thing in India,” said the women’s team captain, Rani Rampal.

Indeed, the teams are causing a stir back home. The Times of India said the women’s victory over Australia rivaled India’s win over England in cricket at Lord’s in 1983 as the greatest sporting upset in Indian history.

The paper had called the men’s semifinal “an hour of reckoning,” saying that “a win will not just confirm a return to the Games podium, but it will restore belief in the sport.”

Though India lost the game, a bronze and that return to the podium is still in the offing. So too, maybe, is a new day for Indian hockey.

Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica is an Olympic champion — again.

Three days after winning the women’s 100 meters, Thompson-Herah broke clear of the field in the 200 on Tuesday night to win in 21.53 seconds, a national record.

Christine Mboma of Namibia was second, and Gabby Thomas of the United States was third.

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who won the silver in the 100, finished in fourth place.

Earlier in the evening, three Americans advanced through the semifinals of the men’s 200 meters — but not without some drama.

Noah Lyles, one of the favorites, slowed as he neared the finish of his heat and was passed by two runners, missing an automatic qualifying spot. He later advanced to the final based on his time. Lyles said he was going with his plan — which apparently meant conserving some energy — but acknowledged that it turned out to be “a little risky.”

The night was capped by Mondo Duplantis of Sweden, who cleared 19 feet 9 inches to win the men’s pole vault. Christopher Nilsen of the U.S. won silver in a final that was absent his American teammate Sam Kendricks, the reigning world champion. Kendricks tested positive for the coronavirus last week and was ruled out of the competition.

Duplantis, 21, grew up in Louisiana but competes for Sweden, his mother’s home country. His first Olympic gold medal assured, he tried to put on a show for the few hundred staff, media and fellow athletes who were in the stadium, but narrowly missed breaking his own world record.

TOKYO — Before Athing Mu introduced herself to the world at the Tokyo Games, the public-address announcer at Olympic Stadium butchered her name.

It was Friday, before her opening round heat of the women’s 800 meters, and Mu did not hide her dismay.

“I’m sure everyone saw my face,” said Mu, a 19-year-old American whose name is pronounced “Ah-THING Moe.”

“I don’t even know what he said, but it was terrible. Like, where do you even get that from?”

Mu said all this with a charming, disarming smile — she was used to people getting her name wrong, she said, but it also seemed clear that she wanted some respect. So she went out and made sure to earn it as an Olympic gold medalist.

On Tuesday, Mu became the first American to win gold in her event since 1968, the latest and greatest milestone for one of the sport’s rising stars.

Mu, who is from Trenton, N.J., finished in 1 minute 55.21 seconds, her personal best and an American record. Her strategy from the start was clear: go to the front and stay there. Her commanding pace turned the race into a coronation.

Keely Hodgkinson of Britain was second, and Raevyn Rogers, Mu’s American teammate, finished third for the bronze.

Mu arrived in Tokyo a few weeks after she completed a historic freshman year at Texas A&M, where she broke a host of collegiate records and won the N.C.A.A. title in the 400. At the end of June, she announced she was going pro and signed with Nike.

She proceeded to dominate the 800 meters at the U.S. trials, winning a spot in Tokyo by running the fastest time in the world this year. The fastest time, that is, until today.

And while Mu acknowledged that becoming an Olympic gold medalist was “insane,” she knew it was not some far-flung dream. She expected it to happen.

“I knew this was where I was supposed to be at this point in time,” she said. “As long as my mind was right, I was going to accomplish my goals.”

Performing a routine filled with difficulty but performed with grace, Guan Chenchen of China, the youngest competitor on Tuesday, won the gold medal in the balance beam at the Tokyo Games. Simone Biles, in her much-anticipated return, won the bronze behind another Chinese athlete, Tang Xijing, who took the silver.

Guan, who is 16 and in her first Olympics, is a specialist on the balance beam and it showed at these Games. With a routine much more difficult than that of her competitors, she had qualified first for the balance beam final.

On Tuesday, she was the eighth and last gymnast to compete and she nailed split leaps, back handsprings, flips and an aerial before flying into the air for her double pike dismount and landing to applause in the arena. Her score of 14.633 was enough to put her ahead of everyone.

Biles, the face of the sport and of Team U.S.A., returned to competition for the final day of artistic gymnastics after skipping all but one competition because of a mental health issue.

Biles, 24, performed back handsprings, flips, split leaps and a double back flip in the pike position for her dismount. There were a few moments of shakiness, but overall it was a solid routine.

Gone were the twists from her complicated and difficult dismount that was named after her. But she finished her routine with a smile, running to give her coach, Cecile Landi, a hug and then embracing her teammate Sunisa Lee, who did not win a medal.

When her score popped up, Biles shook her head in agreement. It was 14.0, far below her usual score, but the best part of it, according to the look of routine on her face, was that she was done.