China’s Consulate General in New York has criticized American network NBC for using “an incomplete map of China” when broadcasting the Chinese delegation’s entry at the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony.
In a statement released on social media Saturday, the consulate’s spokesperson said the map “created a very bad influence and harmed the dignity and emotion of the Chinese people” and urged NBC to “to recognize the serious nature of this problem.”
The map displayed of China did not include Taiwan or the South China Sea. NBC told CNN they do not wish to comment on the matter at this time.
Teenage swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia has won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle, finishing with a time of 3:43.36.
Hafnaoui’s upset victory marks the first time a Tunisian swimmer has ever medaled in this event, and gives Tunisia its second medal of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Jack McLoughlin of Australia finished second with a time of 3:43.52, and Kieran Smith of the United States finished third with a time of 3:43.94.
The 18-year-old Hafnaoui will also compete in the 800-meter freestyle event on July 27.
The United States has won its first medals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as Chase Kalisz and Jay Litherland finished first and second in the Men’s 400-meter Individual Medley.
Chase Kalisz won gold with a time of 4:09.42, while Litherland finished just behind him with a time of 4:10:28. Brendon Smith of Australia won bronze with a time of 4:10.38.
This is the second Olympic medal for Kalisz, who won silver in the same event in 2016, and the first Olympic medal for Litherland. Kalisz is also set to compete in the 200-meter Individual Medley on July 28.
An Iranian athlete playing under the Olympic Refugee team is competing against an Iranian player representing Iran in the taekwondo qualifying round in Tokyo on Sunday.
Kimia Alizadeh, who left Iran in 2020, will face off against Nahid Kiyani Chandeh in the 57kg category of taekwondo in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Alizadeh became the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal competing for Iran after claiming bronze in taekwondo at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Affectionately known in Iran as “The Tsunami,” she announced in 2020 that she permanently left her birth country for Europe amid searing criticism of the regime in Tehran.
“I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years,” the athlete wrote in an Instagram post in 2020 explaining why she was defecting.
Alizadeh was granted refugee status in Germany and now lives in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg, according to Reuters.
According to the IOC website, 29 athletes will compete for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team in the Games.
Athletes from all over the world are officially going for gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The Olympics certainly look different this year — Tokyo is still under a state of emergency because of the Covid-19 pandemic that delayed the Games by a year, and there are no spectators allowed at any of the city’s Olympic venues — but top-tier athleticism is still on full display.
Here are some of the most memorable photos of the Games so far.
See more photos here.
Team USA ended day one of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics without a medal in the Summer Games for the first time since 1972.
The Americans competed in five of the seven events on Saturday. In the first medal event, China’s Yang Qian took the women’s 10m air rifle final gold, while Team USA competitor and event favorite Mary Tucker finished sixth.
World No. 1 Brady Ellison and teammate Mackenzie Brown, competing in the archery mixed team event, were eliminated after losing to Indonesia 5-4 in the first round.
Team USA also competed in the fencing, cycling and weightlifting medal events. China finished with four medals to lead all other countries.
Also, the US Women’s National Team rebounded from their opening match loss with a dominating 6-1 victory over New Zealand. The Americans also won both of their 3x3 basketball matches, 17-10 against France and 21-9 against Mongolia, while the softball team remained unbeaten with a 2-0 win over Mexico.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics kicked off Friday with the Opening Ceremony — almost a year to the day from their intended start date in July 2020.
In March 2020, the International Olympic Committee agreed to postpone the Games until 2021 due to concerns over Covid-19. The event was originally set to begin on July 24, 2020 and end on Aug. 9, 2020.
With the postponement, officials decided that the Games — which would take place in 2021 — would still be called the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The decision to push back the event was the first of its kind in Olympics history. The Games have never been postponed, although they have been canceled on three occasions due to World Wars in 1916, 1940 and 1944.
Eleven gold medals were awarded at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Saturday. Here’s a breakdown of who clinched gold:
Archery
Cycling
Fencing
Judo
Shooting
Taekwondo
Weightlifting
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the event title for Women’s 10m Air Rifle. It has been fixed.
When I first told my medical colleagues that I would be traveling 14 hours to Tokyo, they looked at me with a bit of surprise, then hesitantly told me simply to “be safe.” It is the same reaction I have often received when jetting off to cover a natural disaster, like the earthquake in Haiti, or a conflict, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This time, however, the mission was to report on how people from all over the globe would converge for the Olympic Games in a city under a state of emergency due to the pandemic.
My flight to Japan was nearly empty, just as they often are with my trips into hot zones. Given there were few or no spectators allowed for these games, there were no fans on the plane wearing country colors, speaking excitedly in different languages or exchanging their picks on favored athletes. It was quiet, serene and lonely.
My days prior to departure were filled with detailed planning and lots of testing: a Covid test within 96 hours of departure, and again within 72 hours of departure. Another one immediately upon arrival, and again daily for the duration of my stay. Each time, the possibility of a breakthrough infection lurking in the back of my mind, forcing me into isolation and my team into quarantine for an extended and unplanned stay.
But after postponing the games for a year, the Japanese government and the International Olympics Committee decided the show — the Games — must go on.
And so they are — but they’re very different: strange and eerily quiet.
With his arms outstretched, barely able to contain his joy, Richard Carapaz was well aware of what he had just achieved.
The Ecuadorian cyclist clinched only his country’s second gold medal in Summer Games history on Saturday, crossing the line well ahead of the chasing pack to win a grueling men’s road race.
Ecuador’s only previous gold medal was won by Jefferson Perez at the 1996 Atlanta Games in the men’s 20-kilometer race walk.
Naohisa Takato has won Japan’s first gold medal of its home Olympics, beating Yang Yung-wei of Chinese Taipei to clinch the men’s -60kg judo title.
Takato adds gold to the bronze medal he won in Rio six years ago, a result that was considered something of a disappointment for the three-time world champion.
The 28-year-old’s victory ensured the host nation didn’t suffer a double disappointment in the Japanese martial art, after Funa Tonaki fell to Kosovo’s Distria Krasniq in the women’s -48kg final earlier on Saturday.
Yeldos Smetov of Kazakhstan and Luka Mkheidze of France took home the bronze medals.
Novak Djokovic made light work of opponent Hugo Dellien in the opening round of the men’s singles at Tokyo 2020, beating the Bolivian 6-2 6-2.
However, it was a more grueling afternoon than the scoreline suggested, with the players having to contend with soaring temperatures and stifling humidity.
CNN’s weather team said temperatures on Saturday climbed to near 34°C (93°F) across the greater Tokyo region, with “oppressive” humidity levels above 80%.
Djokovic, who recently claimed his 20th grand slam title with victory at Wimbledon, is aiming to become the first man in history to achieve the ‘Golden Slam,’ winning all four grand slams and Olympic gold in the same year.
Earlier on Saturday, world No. 2 Daniil Medvedev had suggested the tennis matches be scheduled later in the evening to allow players to compete in cooler conditions.
Judoka Funa Tonaki won Japan’s first medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when she took silver in the women’s -48kg judo.
Tonaki lost in the final to Kosovo’s Distria Krasniqi, who won gold.
Bronze went to Ukraine’s Daria Bilodid and Urantsetseg Munkhbat of Mongolia.
CNN Sports has been in touch with British athlete Harry Coppell to find out how he’s doing after a pole vault bar landed on his front teeth while he was training on Wednesday.
In a Twitter thread, Coppell posted video and pictures of what had happened to him.
Given how painful the accident looked, the British pole vaulter sounded in remarkably good spirits on Saturday, telling CNN: “I was lucky that I got to see a few of the dentists in the Olympic village.
“Unfortunately, [they] had to remove one of my teeth because it was fractured near the root but [I] should have some type of retainer in for the comp!”
There’s the pressure of competition, but at Tokyo 2020 the athletes are also having to contend with another challenge – intense heat and humidity.
Richard Carapaz won Ecuador’s first gold medal of the Tokyo Games in the 234-kilometer men’s cycling road race in brutally hot conditions.
Meanwhile, Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedev cooled himself down with a mobile air conditioner during his Tokyo 2020 tennis match at the Ariake Tennis Park.
After he beat Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik 6-4 7-6 in the men’s singles first round, Medvedev described the conditions as “some of the worst (heat) I’ve ever had.”
On Friday, Olympic Russian Archer Svetlana Gomboeva Gomboeva fainted during the Olympic archery qualification tournament, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Five hundred excited spectators gathered Saturday at one of Japan’s rare public viewing sites in Shizuoka prefecture to watch the men’s road cycling race.
Matsubara, who said he was lucky to get a ticket to the public viewing event, out of 2,000 other applicants, said he had been looking forward to watching the road race.
The race sees athletes begin at Tokyo’s Musashinonomori Park, cycle through Kanagawa and Yamanashi prefectures and make their way to the finish line on the Fuji International Speedway in Oyama in Shizuoka prefecture, which is around 2 hours from Tokyo.
The Fuji Speedway is allowing 10,000 ticket holders to witness the last leg of the road race in a venue that usually seats more than 20,000 people.
The public viewing site in Oyama city allows spectators to watch the road cycling race on a screen, enjoy a small bouldering wall and is one of the few events open to the public in Japan.
Currently, spectators will be able to attend less than 12% of Olympic venues during the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games.
Just five of the 42 total Olympic venues across Japan will be open to fans. Tokyo is home to 25 of the venues, with the rest in seven prefectures.
Tokyo venues and four prefectures – Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama and Fukushima – will not have spectators at Olympic competition venues.
Miyagi, Ibaraki and Shizuoka prefectures with a total of five venues can be filled to 50% of capacity with a maximum of 10,000 spectators.
In Shizuoka prefecture, only three locations are organizing public viewing sites for the road cycling race.
Richard Carapaz won Ecuador’s first gold medal of the Tokyo Games with a brilliant ride in the men’s cycling road race.
The 28-year-old broke away in the final 10 kilometers on a brutally hot afternoon to drop the remaining challengers and earn only the second gold medal in Ecuador’s history.
Saturday’s race saw Carapaz, who finished in third place at the 2021 Tour de France, turn the tables on Pogacar, who came into this race as a big favorite after clinching his second Tour title less than a week ago.
The riders not only had to content with the sweltering heat, but also a grueling final climb up the Mikuni Pass, where the field really began to thin out.
The ascent featured 6.5 kilometres at 10.6% gradient, before the riders had to contend with a four-kilometer section with an eye-watering average gradient of 12%.
There was a sprint finish behind Carapaz to decide the remaining two medals, with Belgium’s Wout van Aert taking silver ahead of Pogacar in third by the narrowest of margins.
Former Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas crashed out early on and never really got back into contention, eventually retiring from the race.
The Welshman suffered another crash at the recent Tour de France, resulting in him needing his dislocated shoulder to be popped back in before continuing … ouch.
Thomas tweeted after the race that he is “all good” following what he described as a “freak crash.”
Tennis star Daniil Medvedev resorted to using a mobile air conditioner during his Tokyo 2020 tennis match at the Ariake Tennis Park due to the heat and humidity he had to play in on Saturday.
Medvedev went on to suggest organizers might want to consider scheduling matches later in the day.
Training for an Olympic event is a tough business. It takes hours, days, years of dedication to reach the top of your game as you look to enter the Games in peak condition.
You also look to cover every eventuality … but a pole vault bar landing on your front teeth during training just days before you compete probably wasn’t an eventuality Harry Coppell had ever envisaged having to contend with.
Coppell will be up against world record holder Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis in the pole vault, which starts on July 31.
The Briton is putting a brave face on the accident.
Ouch …
The dental repair work looks quite an extensive job …
China has a second gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, with Hou Zhihui winning the women’s weightlifting 49kg final with an Olympic record total of 210 kilograms.
Hou also holds the world record that she set in April.
On Saturday, she set the Olympic record in the snatch round with 94kg and in the clean and jerk she set an Olympic record with 116kg.
These weight categories are new at the Olympic Games, meaning that the top result in each event is an Olympic record.
Silver went to Chanu Saikhom Mirabai of India and Windy Cantika Aisah of Indonesia took bronze.
