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USA women’s gymnastics, swimming lead best of Tuesday’s Paris Games

July 30, 2024
chandanmalana

Jul 30, 2024, 11:02 AM ET

Tuesday at the 2024 Paris Olympics brings a return to action for a handful of Team USA’s top names.

Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey will look to continue their “redemption tour” in the women’s gymnastics team final. Coco Gauff will face Donna Vekic in the women’s singles third round, then pair up with Taylor Fritz in the mixed doubles first round. Katie Ledecky swims in the women’s 1500m freestyle heats. The Olympic men’s soccer team also plays another group game.

Alongside Gauff and Fritz, Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz play their second men’s doubles match at Roland Garros, while Andy Murray has another chance at delaying his retirement as he plays doubles.

Here’s what to look for Tuesday.

A special moment for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team and their loved ones

After months of sacrifice and training for the Paris Games, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team secured bronze on Monday with a 257.793 score, medaling for the first time since the 2008 Games in Beijing. After receiving their medals, Asher Hong, Paul Juda, Brody Malone, Stephen Nedoroscik and Frederick Richard shared the special moment with their families and significant others.

China takes gold in table tennis mixed doubles

In table tennis mixed doubles’ second year in the Olympics, the event has a second champion.

Three years after China finished with a silver medal in the delayed 2020 Games, its 2024 duo of Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha captured gold Tuesday. Wang and Sun dispatched North Korea’s tandem of Ri Jong Sik and Kim Kum Yong, who took home silver, 4-2. South Korea’s Lim Jonghoon and Shin Yubin earned bronze medal honors.

It’s heating up in Paris

PARIS — It is getting hot at the Olympics. Temperatures just exceeded 30.1 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) at Roland Garros, which has prompted organizers to activate their extreme weather policy.

Players in single matches will have a 10-minute break after the second set. During the break, players can go to the bathroom, take a shower, change their outfit, or eat and drink.

Jasmine Paolini and Anna Karolina Schmiedlova are tied after two sets, so they just had their 10-minute break. As usual, the volunteers came on with a hose to spray the clay and then turned it on the front rows of the crowd. Fans loved it! — Connor O’Halloran

Coco Gauff left in tears after loss

American Coco Gauff was dispatched by Donna Vekic in the third round of the women’s tennis singles competition Tuesday morning in one of the bigger upsets of the event thus far. Vekic, representing Croatia, entered the match ranked No. 21 in the world and as the 13th seed in the Olympic bracket. Gauff slots in at second in WTA’s global ranking, and she was also the second seed in the Olympic tournament.

Vekic will face the winner of the ongoing third-round match between Maria Sakkari, representing Greece, and Marta Kostyuk, representing Ukraine.

Oleksandr Usyk rips Olympic boxing

The International Olympic Committee said that the sport could be dropped from the 2028 Olympic Games if no changes are made in the governance of amateur boxing. Boxing was almost discontinued from the Paris schedule after a row between amateur boxing’s governing body and the IOC. Oleksandr Usyk called the sport “rotten.”

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Usyk: Boxing going nowhere at the Olympics

Heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk discusses the future of Olympic boxing as he calls for change.

“For many years, there has been a desire to change the boxing system, which is rotten on an international level,” Oleksandr Usyk told SNTV at a Q&A session at Ukraine House. — READ MORE

Surfing heats postponed due to weather

Olympic surfing is held halfway across the globe in Tahiti — 9,800 miles away from Paris — to “engage French overseas territories and their communities in the Olympic Games.” The round of surfing heats Tuesday have been postponed, however, due to weather conditions. Surfline, a surf forecasting website, predicts the surf will be large on Tuesday and Wednesday, but winds could bring “disorganized and potentially out of control” conditions.

Katie Ledecky dominates (again) en route to 1,500m free final

The reigning gold medalist in the women’s 1500m free is back to defend her crown, and she is already cruising.

Katie Ledecky has long been dominant in the event — all of the top 15 times in the 1500m free have been recorded by her — and her prowess was visible during her qualifying heat in Paris. Ledecky touched the wall to finish off the race without a competitor in sight — there wasn’t another swimmer in the broadcast camera’s frame as she headed down the home stretch.

Spain flexes its muscles in men’s basketball

Spain, the reigning FIBA Eurobasket champion, beat Greece and NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo 84-77. But it wasn’t in pretty fashion. Spain gained an early 16-point lead in the first half, spearheaded by Santi Aldama‘s 19 points, 12 rebounds and 3 blocks and Sergio Llull, who scored 11 points in the first half.

Antetokounmpo and Greece fought back and tied things up in the second half, where he finished with 27 points, but a lot of their energy went toward the comeback and not the finish.

The ‘pommel horse guy’ is trending

During the U.S. men’s gymnastics team’s bronze medal performance Monday, the wider sports audience was introduced to bespectacled American pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik, whom the U.S. team brought to Paris to do one job, which he has done: Nail pommel horse routines.

The only American gymnast ever to win a world title on the event, the 25-year-old former Penn State gymnast who spends his downtime in Paris solving a Rubik’s Cube, started trending after the meet. He was the final athlete to compete, and he performed a spectacular pommel horse set (sans glasses), where he secured a medal for Team USA.

America instantly fell for “the Clark Kent of pommel horse” and we’re here for it. — Alyssa Roenigk

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