World champion Steven Gardiner becomes Olympic champion with gold in men’s 400 meters
From CNN's Aleks Klosok
Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas ran a season’s best time of 43.85 seconds to win Olympic gold in the men’s 400 meters on Thursday.
A dominant performance sees the 25-year-old add to his 2019 400m World Championship crown.
Gardiner becomes just the fourth world champion to win the Olympic gold medal in this event, after Michael Johnson (1996 and 2000), Kirani James (2012) and Wayde van Niekerk (2016).
Colombia’s Anthony José Zambrano collected silver.
With bronze, Kirani James becomes the first man to win three Olympic medals in this event, having won gold in 2012 and silver in 2016.
8:07 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
Spain’s Sandra Sánchez becomes first Olympic champion in women’s kata
From CNN's Aleks Klosok in London
Spain’s Sandra Sánchez won gold in the inaugural women’s karate “kata” competition with victory over Japan’s Kiyou Shimizu on Thursday.
Sánchez, ranked No.1 in the latest women’s kata world rankings, also becomes Spain’s oldest ever Olympic champion at 39 years and 323 days old.
She surpasses Spain’s previous oldest champion -- track cyclist Joan Llaneras was 39 years and 91 days old when he won gold in the men’s track cycling points race at the 2008 Games in Beijing.
Six-time European champion Sánchez also defeated Shimizu in the women’s kata final at the 2018 world championships in Madrid. The Spaniard won with a score of 28.06 to Shimizu's 27.88
Hong Kong's Grace Lau Mo-sheung and Italy's Viviana Bottaro won the bronze medals.
7:47 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
Abel Kipsang sets new Olympic record during men’s 1,500 meters semifinals
From CNN's Aleks Klosok in London
Kenya’s Abel Kipsang posted a new Olympic record time in the men’s 1,500 meters semifinals at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium on Thursday.
The 24-year-old ran 3:31.65 in the second semifinal, surpassing the previous record set by compatriot Noah Ngeny in the men’s 1,500m final at the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record of 3:26.00, set in Rome in 1998, still remains the time to beat.
World champion Timothy Cheruiyot of Kenya and Norway’s highly rated star Jakob Ingebrigsten were the other notable names to qualify for Saturday’s final.
7:07 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
Olympic marathon events to take place in hot and humid conditions this weekend
From CNN's Taylor Ward and Eryn Mathewson
In an attempt to find cooler temperatures, the men's and women's Olympic marathon events are taking place this weekend in Sapporo, roughly 500 miles (800 km) north of Tokyo.
Unfortunately, the high temperatures that are impacting Tokyo are spreading throughout the entire country, even into Hokkaido.
The women’s marathon takes place Saturday morning while the men race Sunday. This weekend, Sapporo will see morning low temperatures of around 25° C (77° F) and afternoon highs of 32-34° C (90-93° F). These temperatures are 5-7° C (9-13° F) above normal for early August.
Despite the fact that the races take place in the morning hours, temperatures during both races will likely be between 27-30° C (80-86° F).
In addition to the heat, relative humidity values between 70 and 80% will make it feel even warmer.
A long road: The hosting of the Olympic Games has been a marathon effort for both organizers and competitors, with a myriad of challenges and hurdles to overcome by hosting a global sporting event in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
For 44-year-old long-distance runner Abdihakim “Abdi” Abdirahman, who is competing at his fifth Games, the road's been even longer.
Although Tokyo could be his final Olympics, the American is hoping to give his best in Sunday's race.
“It's been a difficult time … I'm just going to go out there and give it my best. I'm just going to worry about what I can control.”
6:29 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
USWNT edge past Australia in thrilling bronze medal match
From CNN's Homero De la Fuente and Ben Morse
The United States Women’s National Team looked more like the squad that won the World Cup in 2019, as it defeated Australia 4-3 to win the bronze medal in the women’s football at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Megan Rapinoe scored a spectacular Olimpico goal -- a goal straight from a corner kick -- in the eighth minute to open the scoring for the US.
Australia’s Sam Kerr leveled the scores minutes later, but Rapinoe scored her second before the halftime break to put the US ahead.
39-year-old Carli Lloyd scored a brace of her own to give the U.S a three-goal lead. With her two goals, Lloyd passed Abby Wambach to become the all-time leading scorer in USWNT Olympic history.
Caitlin Foord and Emily Gielnik scored in the second half to cut the USWNT's lead to one but it would be too little, too late.
The bronze medal is the first in USWNT history. They’ve previously won four gold medals in 1996, 2004, 2008, and 2012.
6:24 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
CNN goes inside Simone Biles’ “secret gym” outside Tokyo
From CNN's Bex Wright in Tokyo
Around an hour’s drive from Tokyo, a university campus surrounded by rice paddies was the unlikely setting behind Simone Biles' Olympic comeback.
CNN was given exclusive access to the Ogawa Gymnastics Arena at Juntendo University, where the Team USA gymnast secretly trained over several days last week to get back into form to compete on the balance beam.
She won a bronze medal in the event on Tuesday, her seventh Olympic medal.
Biles had earlier pulled out of the all-around team event and the majority of individual events after a shaky performance on the vault, saying she was struggling with mental health issues and “the twisties” -- when gymnasts feel lost when they’re flying through the air.
Team USA had contacted the facility via Professor Kazuhiro Aoki of Juntendo University to ask if Biles could train there discreetly away from the capital.
"Working with Team USA and helping get Simone back on her feet, if we were even a small part of that, I think it was a big success and it makes me very happy,” Aoki told CNN.
Last week, Biles posted a series of videos on her Instagram account showing her struggling to find her form and crashing into landing pads while practicing dismounts on the uneven bars.
The gymnastics coach at the arena said he tried to help Biles beat what she described as her “demons.”
“It looked like she was suffering,” coach Wataru Kawai said. “I was hoping I could do something to help her.
“She was trying to do things that she wasn’t able to do,” Kawai added. “She was really trying to figure out what was wrong."
Biles said Wednesday on Twitter she would “forever be thankful” to Juntendo “for allowing me to come train separately to try to get my skills back.”
The Japanese, she wrote in her tweet, "are some of, if not the sweetest people I’ve ever met."
Simone also left a thank you message on the whiteboard of the Ogawa Gymnastics Arena.
The staff there said they will never wipe it off.
6:01 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
Britain's Matt Walls wins gripping omnium cycling gold
From CNN's Ben Morse in London
Team Great Britain's Matt Walls won a gripping gold medal in the omnium cycling event.
The 23-year-old put in a dominant display in his Olympic debut to claim Britain's first track cycling gold at Tokyo 2020.
Walls led the overall rankings heading into the final event, having won the opening scratch race, and finishing third in the tempo race and second in the elimination race.
He eventually finished on a total of 153 points.
New Zealand’s Campbell Stewart took silver with Rio 2016 champion Elia Viviani finishing in bronze.
Walls becomes the third British medal winner in this event, after Ed Clancy won bronze at the 2012 Games in London and Mark Cavendish secured silver at the 2016 Games in Rio.
5:49 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
“I was a little nervous": 14-year-old diving sensation Quan Hongchan on gold medal performance
From CNN's Ben Morse and Gawon Bae
The concerns of most 14-year-old's typically stretch from school to social encounters.
Not for Quan Hongchan though.
The 14-year-old diving sensation -- China's youngest athlete at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics -- won a stunning gold medal in the women’s 10 meter platform diving on Thursday.
Afterwards, she admitted the nerves of the occasion affected her slightly.
“I was a little nervous, but not very, just a little bit,” she told reporters.
She produced two perfect-10 dives in a dominant display. Quan becomes the second-youngest woman ever to win gold in the event after her compatriot Fu Mingxia took the title at the 1992 Barcelona Games at the age of just 13.
Although when asked about what she thinks when people calls her a "diving prodigy," Quan said she didn't agree with that label.
“I don’t think I’m a prodigy. I’m not very bright. I don’t do well in my studies. You ask me all these questions and there’s only a blank in my mind.”
She saw off compatriot Chen Yuxi to finish first and the win extends China’s dominance in women’s diving.
The Asian nation has now claimed gold in all women’s diving events at four successive Games -- Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
The last time a non-Chinese woman won an Olympic diving event was when Australia’s Chantelle Newbery secured women’s 10 meter platform gold at the 2004 Games in Athens.
And although she's not getting ahead of herself about competing at Paris 2024, Quan already has an idea about how she wants to celebrate.
“I want to eat a lot of delicious things tonight! I feel like eating latiao (a popular Chinese spicy snack) the most."
4:58 a.m. ET, August 5, 2021
Tokyo sees another record day of Covid-19 infections, adding more than 5,000 new cases
From CNN's Arthur Syin in Tokyo
Tokyo reported 5,042 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, its highest-ever daily increase since the pandemic began.
This is the capital's second consecutive day of a record increase, topping Wednesday's figure of 4,058 new cases.
At least 358 cases have been linked to the Tokyo 2020 Games, which is in its 13th day of official competition.
The Tokyo metropolitan area is currently under a state of emergency, in effect until August 31.