August 7 Tokyo 2020 Olympics news and results

Sifan Hassan won the women's 10,000 meters on Saturday to complete a golden double on the track at Tokyo 2020.

Hassan took home her first gold medal of the Games on Monday when she came first in the 5000m event, and went on to claim her second medal in the 1500m on Friday when she won bronze. 

Despite her packed schedule, the Dutch runner was able to race clear of Bahrain's Kalkidan Gezahegne and Ethiopia's Letesenbet Gidey, who finished second and third respectively.

The three women were well ahead of the rest of the field but Gidey, who led the initial breakaway group, struggled to stay with Hassan, who waited for the perfect moment to launch her sprint finish and win in a time of 29:55.33.

Hassan had come into Tokyo 2020 dreaming of winning an unprecedented Olympic treble but she still made history by winning medals in all three events. 

No one in Olympic history has completed a medley of medals across both the middle and long-distance events in a single Games before.

Hassan, who was born in Ethiopia, fled to the Netherlands in 2008 as a refugee and has lived there since she was a teenager.

She has raced a total of 24,500 meters in just eight days this Olympics. 

Shlomi Tsafrir has over 100,000 pieces of Olympic memorabilia in his shop. Collecting and selling them is his full-time job -- one which sees him scouring overseas auction houses and even designing pins for Olympic delegations.

However, Tsafrir is one of the many pin traders left disappointed this year as the pandemic has damaged his chances of making sales and collecting new designs. 

With virtually all spectators banned, there are few opportunities to make in-person trades.

Read more about the world of Olympic memorabilia HERE.

At 44, Abdi Abdirahman is the oldest American runner to make an Olympic marathon. And like many athletes competing at Tokyo 2020, his journey to the Games hasn’t been easy. 

The Team USA runner has escaped a civil war, thrived in a country he wasn’t born in, and managed to qualify for his fifth Olympics -- while also navigating a global pandemic. 

But he’ll tell you that it was all worth it.

Scheduled for the last day of the Games on August 8, the 26.2-mile course runs through Sapporo -- a city that sits about 500 miles north of Tokyo, near the tip of Japan. It was chosen to host the marathon over Tokyo because its temperatures are slightly cooler than than the capital.

Just a few months earlier, Abdirahman spoke of potentially going for a sixth Olympics in 2024. But as Tokyo approaches, his tone has changed a little.

No matter where Abdirahman places in Sapporo, he’s already accomplished something few people ever will. Read more about it HERE.

The United States won gold in women’s water polo for the third-straight Olympics after routing Spain 14-5 behind Madeline Musselman’s hat-trick on Saturday. 

Here are the impressive stats accompanying that victory:

"I have the chills right now. I don't think it's fully sunk in yet. I'm just proud of this moment," said Steffens.

Second-placed Spain, meanwhile, is the second nation to lose multiple finals in women’s water polo tournament after the US in 2000 and 2008.

Hungary claimed bronze by beating the Russian Olympic Committee 11-9.

The men's marathon is perhaps the headline event on the final day of the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday. The pre-race favorite is 2016 champion and world record holder Eliud Kipchoge, a man who some say has redefined the realms of human potential over 26.2 miles.

Having set the world record of two hours, one minute and 39 seconds at the 2018 Berlin Marathon, Kipchoge went on to run the first ever marathon in under two hours in Vienna in 2019. That feat, part of the INEOS 1:59 challenge, isn't recognized as an official record due to the use of a race car and pacemakers, alongside other performance-enhancing technology.

Kipchoge, one of Kenya’s six gold medalists in 2016, has been hailed for his determined, dedicated mindset when it comes to marathon running.

One filmmaker who spent time with the 36-year-old even likened his lifestyle to that of an ascetic monk. You can read more about that here.

A win in Sapporo on Sunday would cement Kipchoge’s legacy as the greatest marathon runner of all time, but he will have to overcome hot weather and a field that includes the reigning marathon world champion Lelisa Desisa and last year’s London Marathon winner Shura Kitata.

China’s Cao Yuan won gold in the men’s 10-meter platform diving, securing victory with a total score of 582.35.

The Chinese diver is now the first athlete to win Olympic gold medals in three different diving events -- he previously won the 10m synchronized in London 2012 and 3-meter springboard in Rio 2016.

Cao narrowly edged fellow Chinese diver Yang Jian, who took silver with a score of 580.40. China now holds the most Olympic medals in this event.

Great Britain’s Tom Daley, who took gold in the men’s synchronized 10m platform earlier in these Games, earned bronze with a score of 548.25.

Daley becomes the first British athlete to win at least four Olympic medals in diving and the second British athlete to win multiple medals in diving at a single Olympics.

China now has 84 medals -- including 38 golds -- at the Tokyo Games.

Norwegian duo Anders Mol and Christian Sørum won the country's first medal in men's beach volleyball on Saturday, defeating the Russian Olympic Committee's Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy 21-17, 21-18 to win gold.

The win gives Norway its third gold medal of the Tokyo Olympics and its sixth medal overall.

“It feels unreal, we have been working so hard for so long and this has been our dream for so many years," said Mol.

"To be the youngest Olympic champions (in beach volleyball), this is really a dream come true. I don’t think we’ve realised what we have done, right now it's surreal.”

Sørum is 25, while Mol turned 24 in July.

"Three years ago, I took a screenshot of the Olympic Gold medal from Rio and I have put it on my phone and watched that medal every day since," aded Sørum.

"To stand here with a gold medal, to get it with Anders and the team, it’s just amazing.”

The No. 1 ranked men's team in the world, Mol and Sørum spoke to CNN ahead of the Olympics about their rise through the ranks. You can read more from them here.

Qatar's Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan took home bronze, winning the country's first Olympic medal in the event.

The Olympics in Tokyo demonstrate how the Covid-19 pandemic can be managed, says a medical adviser to the Games' organizers.

The former director of Global Health for Public Health England, Dr. Brian McCloskey said he feels that organizers' efforts to keep the event safe were "very successful."

McCloskey said the data gathered in the past few weeks will be shared so other organizations and governments can learn from what took place in Tokyo.

Concerns still abound

Though the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have, by and large, gone about as well as could be hoped for a major sporting competition held in the middle of a pandemic, the situation throughout the Japanese capital is getting worse, with new cases surging to record levels and doctors warning of a medical system that risks being overwhelmed.

Olympic organizers and Japan's leaders, including Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, have previously said they do not believe the Olympics have contributed to the surge in cases.

However some medical professionals and public health experts disagree. They see people gathering outside venues like Tokyo's Olympic Stadium and worry that a corresponding, post-Games spike in Covid-19 cases is coming.

Five members of Australia's field hockey team have been punished for leaving the Olympic Village early Thursday to buy beer, a violation of the strict protocols put in place to prevent Covid-19 from infecting athletes and other people involved with the Games.

Ian Chesterman, the chef de mission for Australia's Olympic delegation, told reporters a group of three athletes left the village at 3 a.m. in search of beer and went to a local convenience store. They were out of the village for about 20 minutes, he said.

Another group left at 6 a.m. but returned without purchasing anything.

The field hockey players are not the first Australian representatives to make headlines for bad behavior during the Games. Other Olympians were criticized for "excessive alcohol consumption" and "loud and disruptive" behavior on their flight home.