Australia players celebrate at the end of a women's basketball preliminary round game against Puerto Rico at the 2020 Summer Olympics on Aug. 2, 2021, in Saitama, Japan.Charlie Neibergall/The Associated Press
A day of nervous scoreboard watching ended in heartbreak for Canada’s women’s basketball team.
The squad didn’t get the help it needed on the final day of group play to advance to the quarter-finals of the Olympic basketball tournament.
The dagger came when Australia defeated Puerto Rico 96-69 in Monday’s final game, dropping Canada to ninth in the combined rankings. Australia’s 27-point margin of victory eclipsed the 24 it needed to move on and eliminate Canada.
Canada and Australia finished with 1-2 records, but the Aussies’ margin of victory over Puerto Rico gave them a better point differential than Canada.
The top two teams in the three pools, plus the two highest-ranked third -place teams, advanced to the quarter-finals.
The Canadians, ranked fourth entering the tournament, had put themselves in a precarious position early by losing their first game 72-68 to Serbia. Canada suffered from poor shooting to come up short in what was a winnable game.
After righting the ship with a 74-53 win over South Korea, Canada came out flat on Sunday with a 76-66 loss to Spain in its final group stage game.
“Heartbroken for our team,” Canadian head coach Lisa Thomadis said after the loss to Spain.
BELARSUIAN GRANTED HUMANITARIAN VISA
A Belarusian athlete sought amnesty in the Polish embassy in Tokyo in a diplomatic controversy playing out on the sideline of the Games, as Simone Biles said she would be back to compete in the final gymnastics event. Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who took refuge in the Polish embassy on Monday a day after refusing her team’s orders to board a flight home from the Olympic Games, has been granted a humanitarian visa by the Warsaw government. Tsimanouskaya plans to leave for Poland in the coming days, a Polish deputy foreign minister, Marcin Przydacz, told Reuters. She is “safe and in good condition” after walking into the embassy on Monday morning, he said. Tsimanouskaya, 24, had been due to compete in the women’s 200-metre heats on Monday, but her Games was cut short when she was taken to the airport to board a Turkish Airlines flight.
CHINA LIFTS SEVEN GOLDS
China won its sixth and seventh gold medals in weightlifting on Monday, matching Russia’s record from the 1976 Games, as Li Wenwen and Wang Zhouyu triumphed in the women’s heaviest weight categories at Tokyo 2020. The 21-year-old Li had a dominant lead in the +87-kilogram event, lifting 320 kg in total to set an Olympic record, while Wang won the women’s 87-kg class with a combined weight of 270 kg.
WALK IT OFF
Yuki Yanagita tied it with a run-scoring grounder off Scott McGough in the ninth inning, Takuya Kai hit a walk off single against Edwin Jackson in the 10th and Japan beat the United States 7-6 to reach the Olympic semi-finals. Japan (3-0) will play South Korea (3-1) on Wednesday night for a spot in the final. The U.S. (2-1) fell into the loser’s bracket of the double-elimination second round. To reach this weekend’s final, it must beat the winner of Tuesday’s elimination game between the Dominican Republic (1-2) and Israel (1-3), and then the Japan-South Korea loser.
SMILING ARCHER
Turkey’s newest Olympic gold medallist Mete Gazoz has a weapon even more deadly than his archer’s bow – a beaming smile. “Imagine you’re in the Olympic final, drawing your bow and some dude behind you is grinning from ear to ear. I owe 80 per cent of this medal to the smile,” he told Reuters, a large gold medal around his neck. The 22-year-old, who was “born into” the sport as the son of a national champion archer, concedes that he is normally quite a nervous person. “Not when I have the bowstring in my hand,” he said with a grin. “That is my happy place in life. It’s where I feel safest.”