Paris 2024 Olympics: Ledecky settles for bronze, Team USA wins first gold

Summer Olympics

Updated Jul. 27, 2024 7:43 p.m. ET

Australia took the lead in its swimming showdown against the United States at the Paris Olympics by claiming two of three gold medals on the first full day of competition.

Ariarne Titmus turned one of the most anticipated races of the Games into a blowout when she left Katie Ledecky in her wake at La Defense Arena. Titmus led from start to finish in the 400-meter freestyle Saturday night.

The Australian star known as “The Terminator” handed Ledecky a second straight Olympic defeat in an event the American won at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Titmus faced her stiffest challenge from 17-year-old Canadian phenom Summer McIntosh, but she won comfortably as McIntosh claimed the silver. Ledecky settled for bronze.

Titmus swept the 200 and 400 free in Tokyo, and she is going for the same double in Paris. Ledecky is going for a double in the 800 and 1,500.

Australia then made it 2 for 2 against the Americans in the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay, claiming its fourth straight Olympic title in that event.

The quartet of Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack, Emma McKeon and Meg Harris set an Olympic record with a winning time of 3 minutes, 28.92 seconds.

The Americans — Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh, Torri Huske and Simone Manuel — rallied to take silver. China took bronze.

The U.S. finally got its first gold in the men’s 4×100 freestyle relay. The Americans were anchored by Caeleb Dressel, who won the eighth gold medal of his career.

Australia took the silver.

CHINA TAKES FIRST GOLD OF GAMES

The first gold medal of the Paris Olympics went to China when Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao beat South Korea’s Keum Jihyeon and Park Hajun in the final of the 10-meter air rifle mixed team event Saturday morning.

Shortly before that, Kazakhstan’s Alexandra Le and Islam Satpayev became the first medalists of the games when they beat Germany’s Anna Janssen and Maximilian Ulbrich 17-5 for the bronze.

WEMBY’S DEBUT

Victor Wembanyama did not disappoint in his Olympic debut as the NBA Rookie of the Year had 19 points, nine rebounds, four steals and three blocked shots for host France in a 78-66 win over Brazil.

The game was played in front of a sold-out crowd in support of last year’s top pick in the NBA draft.

Wembanyama and the French team skipped the opening ceremony in Paris on Friday night to rest for their Saturday game in Lille, which is about an hour from Paris by train.

FRANCE’S FIRST MEDALS

Luka Mkheidze and Shirine Boukli won France’s first two medals of the Olympics when Mkheidze claimed silver and Boukli earned bronze in judo.

Mkheidze lost 1-0 to Yeldos Smetov of Kazakhstan in the final of the men’s 60-kilogram division — a disappointing result for the raucous crowd at Champ-de-Mars Arena. About 30 minutes before Mkheidze’s loss, Boukli claimed France’s first medal of its home Olympics with a victory over Spain’s Laura Martinez in a bronze-medal match.

Paris will have plenty of chances to cheer on its vaunted judo team, which has a competitor in all 14 weight classes in these Olympics. France is one of the world’s top judo nations.

CANADA SOCCER SCANDAL

FIFA deducted six points from Canada in the Olympics women’s soccer tournament and banned three coaches for one year each for a drone spying scandal.

Two assistant coaches were caught using drones to spy on New Zealand’s practices before their opening game last Wednesday. Head coach Bev Priestman, who led Canada to the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, already was suspended by the national soccer federation and then removed from the Olympic tournament. She is now banned from all soccer for one year.

FIFA fast-tracked its own disciplinary process by asking its appeals judges to handle the case.

TENNIS CONTROVERSY

Novak Djokovic was perplexed by the Olympics rules after his 6-0, 6-1 rout in less than an hour against an overmatched Matthew Ebden, a 36-year-old doubles player from Australia who hadn’t competed in a tour-level, main-draw singles match since June 2022.

Djokovic felt other singles players deserved a spot at the Olympics instead of Ebden.

Ebden was in Paris to compete in men’s doubles, where he’s been as high as No. 1 and currently is No. 3 and has won two major championships. That made him available for the singles competition when 16th-ranked Holger Rune of Denmark pulled out because of a wrist injury.

Ebden was not the first doubles player asked to fill in, but he was the first to say yes. He hadn’t even practiced singles in about two years until playing a tiebreaker in training on Friday.

In other tennis action, Rafael Nadal is not sure whether he will compete in singles, saying after he paired with Carlos Alcaraz to win their first-round doubles match Saturday night that he wants to “make the smartest decision possible to have the best chances to bring (a) medal back home.”

Nadal’s first match in singles, against Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics, is scheduled for Sunday.

Also, Angelique Kerber eliminated Naomi Osaka 7-5, 6-3 in the first round in a matchup between former No. 1-ranked players with multiple Grand Slam titles.

RAIN DISRUPTIONS

Rain continued from the opening ceremony through the first full day of competition and caused several postponements and delays at the Paris Olympics.

Men’s street skateboarding was supposed to start Saturday but was pushed to Monday because of the showers. The start of play in the scheduled tennis matches on the 10 smaller courts at Roland Garros was delayed because of rain, but action started as scheduled in the two main stadiums that have retractable roofs.

The rain could threaten the water quality for swimming in the Seine when the triathlon begins Tuesday with the men’s event at the Alexander III bridge next to Grand Palais.

10-TIME OLYMPIAN

Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze made history as the first woman to compete at 10 Olympic Games in a career which began representing the Soviet Union. She has competed at every Summer Olympics since 1988, when she won gold as a 19-year-old Soviet prodigy.

She set her latest record when she stepped into the shooting range for qualification in the women’s 10-meter air pistol. Salukvadze placed 38th and didn’t advance to Sunday’s eight-shooter final. She gets another shot at a medal Friday in qualification for the 25-meter pistol event.

In a career spanning five decades, the 55-year-old has competed on three different Olympic teams: the Soviet Union in 1988, then the Unified Team which was organized for ex-Soviet athletes in Barcelona in 1992 after the Soviet Union collapsed.

She has represented her home country of Georgia following its independence for the last eight Olympics.

CHINA’S DIVING QUEST

China has ruled diving for decades and came to Paris seeking to sweep all eight gold medals. The nation got off to a perfect start Saturday when the team of Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen won gold in the women’s synchronized 3-meter springboard with 337.68 points on five dives.

Three years ago in Tokyo, China won seven of eight gold medals. It has never pulled off the elusive gold sweep.

HUNGARIAN FENCER LOSES

An era-defining streak in Olympic fencing was snapped by an upset when Hungarian fencer Aron Szilagyi lost his opening bout while chasing a fourth consecutive gold medal.

Szilagyi won gold medals in men’s individual saber in 2012, 2016 and 2021 and was trying to become the only fencer in history to win a fourth.

Instead, the streak ended in Szilagyi’s first bout of the Paris Games as he was beaten 15-8 by the 27th-seeded Canadian Fares Arfa in one of the biggest upsets so far at the 2024 Olympics.

Reporting by The Associated Press.

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