PARIS — The U.S. men’s water polo team has been overshadowed by the country’s dominant women’s program for more than a decade.
The men are looking to make their own noise at the Paris Olympics. Hannes Daube and Max Irving each scored three times to lead the United States to a surprising 14-11 victory over Croatia on Monday on the final day of group play. The Americans improved to 3-2 at the Games with their second straight win.
They finished third in Group A, setting up a quarterfinal matchup with Australia on Wednesday. “We need to be focused. The job’s not done,” U.
S. attacker Luca Cupido said. “We are where we want to be, in the quarterfinal.
It doesn’t matter who is in the other team. We’re going to come ready for the next game.” The U.
S. men finished sixth at the Tokyo Games. While the American women are going for an unprecedented fourth consecutive Olympic title, the men are trying for the program’s first medal since a silver in 2008.
“Every team is different. This team had the luxury of being together through one Olympics and retaining the majority of the players,” Cupido said, “so we have built some camaraderie that we are showing now on the defensive end.” Two U.
S. teams fell on the sand at Eiffel Tower Stadium, with Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss losing to Canada in the women’s quarterfinals a few hours after Chase Budinger and Miles Evans lost to Norway in the men’s. Only Miles Evans and Andy Benesh advanced on the day, joining Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes in the elite eight.
Kloth and Nuss are ranked No. 2 in the world, and Nuss said she was “definitely a little heartbroken.” Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes beat Nuss and Kloth 21-19, 21-18, leaving the country that has won four of the last five women’s gold medals with just one team in the bracket.
Budinger, a former NBA player, and Evans lost in straight sets to Norway, the defending Olympic champions. Already at Paris, five-time Olympian and Rio de Janeiro gold medalist Laura Ludwig of Germany has been eliminated, and the 42-year-old Herrera has said he will retire. The Seine River was determined safe enough to swim in and Olympic triathletes plunged into the murky water for the mixed relay event after organizers said bacteria levels in the long-polluted Paris waterway were at acceptable levels.
The plan to hold the swimming portion of the triathlons and the marathon swimming events in the Seine was an ambitious one as swimming in the river has, with some exceptions, been off-limits since 1923 because it has been too toxic. Water quality tests were reviewed Sunday night and the results indicated the water quality at the triathlon site had improved over the preceding hours and was within the limits mandated by World Triathlon by Monday morning. In a very close sprint finish, the team from Germany won the gold medal in the team relay.
The United States took silver and Britain clinched bronze. The decision to allow the event to go forward with swims in the Seine came after Belgium’s Olympic committee announced Sunday that it would withdraw its team from the mixed relay triathlon after one of its competitors who swam in the river last week fell ill. Another three triathletes — of the more than 100 who competed in the men’s and women’s races last Wednesday — became sick in the following days, though it’s unclear whether the water was to blame.
Juanlu Sanchez came off the bench to lift Spain into a record-equaling fifth Olympic men’s soccer final. Sanchez scored in the 85th minute at Stade de Marseille to seal a 2-1 win over Morocco. Spain will face host France in the final on Friday.
France advanced with a 3-1 victory over Egypt in the second semifinal. Morocco led 1-0 at halftime after the tournament’s leading scorer Soufiane Rahimi converted a penalty in the 37th. Spain evened the score in the 65th after Fermin Lopez showed quick feet in the box and fired a left-footed shot low in the bottom corner.
It was the Barcelona midfielder’s fourth goal of the tournament and over-exuberant celebrations earned him a yellow card after kicking the corner flag and breaking it in two. It was Lopez’s assist that set up Sanchez to sweep his winning goal low into the far corner. Spain, which won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, lost in the final at the Tokyo Games three years ago to Brazil.
The British trio of Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane shattered the world record in the women’s team sprint while beating New Zealand in a head-to-head showdown for the gold medal to open the track cycling program. In the three-lap race, the British trio trailed Rebecca Petch, Shaane Fulton and Ellesse Andrews after the first 250 meters. But they quickly pulled ahead after the second lap, then blitzed the last to finish in 45.
196 seconds, earning their nation’s first medal inside the Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Despite its proud sprinting tradition, the British had repeatedly missed the podium since the event’s debut in 2008. ATHLETICS Men’s Pole Vault GOLD: Armand Duplantis, Sweden SILVER: Sam Kendricks, United States BRONZE: Emmanouil Karalis, Greece Women’s 5000m GOLD: Beatrice Chebet, Kenya SILVER: Sifan Hassan, Netherlands BRONZE: Nadia Battocletti, Italy Women’s 800m GOLD: Keely Hodgkinson, Britain SILVER: Tsige Duguma, Ethiopia BRONZE: Mary Moraa, Kenya Women’s Discus Throw GOLD: Valarie Allman, United States SILVER: Bin Feng, China BRONZE: Sandra Elkasevic, Croatia BADMINTON Men’s Singles GOLD: Viktor Axelsen, Denmark SILVER: Kunlavut Vitidsarn, Thailand BRONZE: Zii Jia Lee, Malaysia Women’s Singles GOLD: Se Young An, South Korea SILVER: Bing Jiao He, China BRONZE: Gregoria Mariska Tunjung, Indonesia 3X3 BASKETBALL Men GOLD: Netherlands (Jan Driessen, Dimeo van der Horst, Arvin Slagter, Worthy de Jong) SILVER: France (Lucas Dussoulier, Timothe Vergiat, Jules Rambaut, Franck Seguela) BRONZE: Lithuania (Sarunas Vingelis, Gintautas Matulis, Aurelijus Pukelis, Evaldas Dziaugys) Women GOLD: Germany (Marie Reichert, Elisa Mevius, Sonja Greinacher, Svenja Brunckhorst) SILVER: Spain (Vega Gimeno, Sandra Ygueravide, Juana Camilion, Gracia Alonso) BRONZE: United States (Dearica Hamby, Cierra Burdick, Hailey van Lith, Rhyne Howard) CANOE SLALOM Men’s Kayak Cross GOLD: Finn Butcher, New Zealand SILVER: Joseph Clarke, Britain BRONZE: Noah Hegge, Germany Women’s Kayak Cross GOLD: Noemie Fox, Australia SILVER: Angele Hug, France BRONZE: Kimberley Woods, Britain CYCLING TRACK Women’s Team Sprint GOLD: Britain (Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane, Katy Marchant) SILVER: New Zealand (Ellesse Andrews, Shaane Fulton, Rebecca Petch) BRONZE: Germany (Lea Friedrich, Pauline Grabosch, Emma Hinze) ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS Men’s Floor Exercise GOLD: Carlos Edriel Yulo, Philippines SILVER: Artem Dolgopyat, Israel BRONZE: Jake Jarman, Britain Men’s Horizontal Bar GOLD: Shinnosuke Oka, Japan SILVER: Angel Barajas, Colombia BRONZE: Boheng Zhang, China BRONZE: Chia-Hung Tang, Taiwan Men’s Parallel Bars GOLD: Jingyuan Zou, China SILVER: Illia Kovtun, Ukraine BRONZE: Shinnosuke Oka, Japan Men’s Pommel Horse GOLD: Rhys Mc Clenaghan, Ireland SILVER: Nariman Kurbanov, Kazakhstan BRONZE: Stephen Nedoroscik, United States Women’s Balance Beam GOLD: Alice D’Amato, Italy SILVER: Yaqin Zhou, China BRONZE: Manila Esposito, Italy Women’s Floor Exercise GOLD: Rebeca Andrade, Brazil SILVER: Simone Biles, United States BRONZE: Jordan Chiles, United States SHOOTING 25m Rapid Fire Pistol Men GOLD: Yuehong Li, China SILVER: Yeongjae Cho, South Korea BRONZE: Xinjie Wang, China Skeet Mixed Team GOLD: Italy (Diana Bacosi, Gabriele Rossetti) SILVER: United States (Austen Jewell Smith, Vincent Hancock) BRONZE: China (Yiting Jiang, Jianlin Lyu) TRIATHLON Mixed Relay GOLD: Germany (Tim Hellwig, Lisa Tertsch, Lasse Luehrs, Laura Lindemann) SILVER: United States (Seth Rider, Taylor Spivey, Morgan Pearson, Taylor Knibb) BRONZE: Britain (Alex Yee, Georgia Taylor-Brown, Samuel Dickinson, Beth Potter).
