Iranian defector from Olympic Refugee Team defeats two-time champion Jade Jones in taekwondo
Iranian defector from Olympic Refugee Team defeats two-time champion Jade Jones in taekwondo
From CNN’s Jacob Lev
Kimia Alizadeh, an Iranian taekwondo athlete competing for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team has defeated two-time Olympic gold medalist Jade Jones in the round-of-16.
Alizadeh became the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal competing for Iran after claiming bronze in taekwondo at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
In 2020, she announced that she permanently left her birth country for Europe amid searing criticism of the regime in Tehran.
Alizadeh will face Lijun Zhou in the quarterfinals.
“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.
Read more about her here.
US golf star out of Olympic Games after testing positive for Covid-19
From CNN’s Dan Moriarty
US golfer Bryson DeChambeau will not compete in the Olympic Games after testing positive for Covid-19 prior to departing for Tokyo, according to USA Golf.
“Bryson DeChambeau tested positive for Covid-19, as part of the final testing protocol before he left the United States for the Olympics 2020 in Japan. He will be unable to compete for Team USA,” USA Golf said in a press release.
Two-time Olympian Patrick Reed will replace DeChambeau. His first round of competition is set for Thursday, July 29.
“I am deeply disappointed not to be able to compete in the Olympics for Team USA,” said DeChambeau.
“Representing my country means the world to me and it is was a tremendous honor to make this team. I wish Team USA the best of luck next week in Tokyo. I will now focus on getting healthy, and I look forward to returning to competition once I am cleared to do so.”
DeChambeau has won eight times on the PGA Tour including one major championship, the 2020 US Open.
Australia breaks world record in women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay
From CNN’s Kevin Dotson
Australia has won the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay gold in world-record fashion at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Australia’s winning time of 3:29.69 beat the previous world record of 3:30.05, which was also set by Australia in 2018.
This was Australia’s first gold medal of these Olympics and their third total medal.
Canada won silver with a time of 3:32.78, giving Canada its first medal in Tokyo. The United States took bronze with a time of 3:32.81, giving the US its sixth total medal of the Games.
Top-seeded Ashleigh Barty knocked out of Olympics in first round
From CNN’s Kevin Dotson
Australian tennis star Ashleigh Barty was knocked out of the Olympic women’s singles tournament in Tokyo in the first round by Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo.
Barty was the tournament’s top seed and the number one ranked woman in the world coming off a championship at Wimbledon.
Sorribes Tormo defeated Barty in straight sets 6-4, 6-3.
Meanwhile, British tennis player Andy Murray has withdrawn from the men’s singles tennis tournament due to a quad strain, Team GB announced. He will continue to compete in the men’s doubles tournament.
Murray won men’s singles gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
US Olympic athlete tests positive for Covid-19
From CNN’s Chandler Thornton
A US Olympic athlete has tested positive for Covid-19 in Tokyo, according to the US Olympic Committee.
It did not reveal the identity of the athlete.
“Of the 1,038 US Olympic delegates in Japan on July 24, one Covid test was confirmed positive based on daily results,” the committee said in a tweet on Saturday night.
The committee announced on Friday that it would report daily positive cases from US Olympic athletes in Tokyo.
“Additionally, of the nearly 60% of the US Olympic delegation who was expected to travel to Japan from July 1-23, six US athletes and officials tested positive for Covid-19 as part of the rigorous pre-departure testing process and were not permitted to travel,” the committee said Friday.
“The remaining 40% of the US delegation for the Olympic Games will arrive in Tokyo periodically over the coming weeks as pre-departure testing and monitoring continues,” it added.
Ten new Games-related Covid cases reported on Day Two
Ten new Covid-19 cases were reported on the second day of the Tokyo Olympic Games, bringing the total number of Games-related cases to 137, according to Tokyo 2020 organizers Sunday.
Two of the new cases were reported from Tokyo’s Olympic Village, one of which was identified as an athlete, organizers said. Another athlete also tested positive but was not a resident of the Olympic Village.
At least 15 cases have been reported out of the Olympic Village and 15 total athletes — including residents and non-residents of Olympic Village — have tested positive for the virus, according to organizers.
The remaining cases are identified as contractors, media, or Games-concerned personnel.
Tokyo 2020 is not revealing the names nor nationalities of the Covid-19 cases.
A look back at the arduous journey to get to Tokyo 2020
From CNN’s Sana Noor Haq and George Ramsey
Tokyo 2020 is truly shaping up to be an Olympics like we’ve never seen before, notably the spectator ban which the International Olympic Committee says is the first time ever that a host city will not actually have spectators watching the event.
Nearly eight out of 10 (78%) people in Japan also say the Olympics should not go ahead as scheduled, according to a recent Ipsos Mori survey.
Despite the Games being delayed and that degree of public opposition, here’s a timeline with some key moments marking how Tokyo 2020 finally came to be staged:
- March 30, 2020: The IOC announces new dates for the Tokyo Olympics, which will be held from July 23 to August 8, 2021. The new dates for the Paralympic Games are August 24 to September 5, 2021.
- Sept. 25, 2020: As the coronavirus pandemic shows few signs of abating, Olympic organizers propose plans for a scaled-down event in Tokyo, which includes cutting down the number of officials by 10% to 15%, reducing invitations for both the opening and closing ceremonies, and offering shorter opening periods for training venues.
- Dec. 22, 2020: The organizing committee says the postponed Games are set to cost $2.8 billion more than initially projected, bringing the total cost of hosting the Games to $15.4 billion with an extra $900 million for pandemic countermeasures.
- Jan. 22, 2021: The IOC tells CNN that a report in the Times of London, citing an unnamed senior member of the ruling coalition, that the Games are set to be canceled due to Covid-19 are “categorically untrue,” with the Japanese government corroborating the same message.
- Feb. 13, 2021: Less than six weeks before the Olympic torch relay is due to begin in Fukushima to showcase the region’s recovery from a catastrophic nuclear disaster a decade ago, the Japanese prefecture is rocked by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake.
- March 2, 2021: For athletes, the past year has been beset with uncertainty. Husband and wife Tyrone Smith and Sandi Morris tell CNN about the challenges of navigating the “purgatory” of a postponed Olympics, and how they are holding out on dreams of competing at their first Games as a married couple.
- March 20, 2021: Tokyo 2020 organizers announce that international spectators will be refused entry into Japan for this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games to reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission.
- March 25, 2021: The Tokyo Olympic torch relay begins. Members of the Japan women’s football team began the 121-day journey, which passes through 859 locations before culminating in the opening ceremony on July 23.
- May 14, 2021: A petition calling for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics garners 350,000 signatures in nine days, reflecting the public opposition to the event as a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections sweeps Japan.
- May 14, 2021: Amid growing concerns over the viability of holding Tokyo 2020 during a global pandemic, Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of top Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, tells CNN Business that hosting the Olympics amounts to a “suicide mission.”
- July 8, 2021: Tokyo venues for the pandemic-delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics will not have spectators due to the city’s coronavirus state of emergency through the Games.
- July 22, 2021: Even as athletes arrived for the Olympics, some were soon to discover that they wouldn’t be able to compete. Czech beach volleyball players Markéta Sluková-Nausch and Barbora Hermannova were both ruled out of the Games as the European team grappled with Covid-19 after they landed in Tokyo.
- July 23, 2021: The Olympics Opening Ceremony officially kicked off the Games, with US first lady Jill Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron attending the event. As Japan continued to report record Covid-19 cases, athletes from over 200 countries paraded in a near-empty stadium. Some teams are practiced social distancing while others didn’t. Ahead of the opening ceremony’s start, protesters took to the streets of Tokyo to voice their opposition to the staging of the Olympics in Japan.
Here’s why the Games are called the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, even though it’s 2021
From CNN’s Alyssa Kraus and George Ramsay
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 August 9, 2020.
“The IOC president and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games … must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community,” a statement from the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee read.
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.
Here’s a look at the medal events coming up today
There will be 18 medal events today at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. After the Opening Ceremony on Friday, 11 sets of medals were handed out on Saturday.
Here’s a look at the 18 medal events to watch on Sunday:
- Archery — Women’s Team
- Cycling — Women’s Road Race
- Fencing — Women’s Foil Individual
- Fencing — Men’s Epee Individual
- Judo — Women -52kg Final
- Judo — Men -66kg Final
- Shooting — 10m Air Pistol Women
- Shooting — 10m Air Rifle Men
- Taekwondo — Women -57 kg Final
- Taekwondo — Men -68 kg Final
- Weightlifting — Men’s 61 kg
- Weightlifting — Men’s 67 kg
- Diving — Women’s Synchronized 3m Springboard
- Skateboarding — Men’s Street Final
- Swimming — Men’s 400m Individual Medley
- Swimming — Men’s 400m Freestyle
- Swimming — Women’s 400m Individual Medley
- Swimming — Women’s 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/10f6G1WbFBk/h_c04199a66e7a4832f0f03fea63195f9b
