Canadian women win first-ever gold in football

Canada won their first gold medal in women's football, beating Sweden 3-2 in a penalty shootout after extra time failed to break a 1-1 draw in Tokyo on Friday. Sweden took a second consecutive silver medal, having lost to Germany in the 2016 final in Rio.

Julia Grosso kept her cool with the decisive penalty in shootout sudden death to give Canada gold to go along with the bronze medals they'd earned in Rio and in London in 2012.

Stina Blackstenius had put Sweden ahead in the 34th minute, steering the ball past Stephanie Labbe after a square ball in the area from Kosovare Asllani.

Canada drew level with a Jesse Fleming penalty in the 67th minute after the referee went to the pitchside monitor and ruled that Swedish defender Amanda Ilestedt had brought down Canada's Christine Sinclair.

Sweden dominated for the remainder of regulation time and the 30 minutes of extra time but failed to turn the pressure into efforts on goal.

For Canada it was just the second Olympic gold medal in football, the men having won gold when a team from Galt, Ontario represented the country in a three-team tournament at the 1904 Games in St. Louis.

Historic first

As part of the Canadian team midfielder Quinn made history beyond winning the country's first Olympic gold medal in women's football. The 25-year-old midfielder from Toronto, who was in the starting 11, became the first openly transgender and non-binary athlete to win an Olympic medal.

Quinn earned their first cap for Canada in 2014 and won bronze at the 2016 Rio Games, but only came out as transgender last autumn.

"I wanted to be my authentic self in all spheres of my life and one of those is being in a public space," Quinn said at the time. "So that was one of the reasons behind it, because I was tired of being misgendered and everything like that."

The midfielder's pioneering status at the Tokyo Games had until now largely been overshadowed by the presence of transgender New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard.

Other gold medals

The 400-meter distance belongs to the Bahamas at the Tokyo Olympics, with Shaunae Miller-Uibo following in the footsteps of male compatriot Steven Gardiner to win the women's final on Friday.

American Allyson Felix, competing in her first Olympics as a mother, took the bronze, her 10th career Olympic medal.

Italy won the men's 4x100 meters relay gold in a national record 37.50 seconds at the Tokyo Olympics on Friday. The Italians edged Britain by 0.01 seconds and Canada took bronze in 37.70. It was Italy's first Olympic medal in the relay since a bronze at the 1948 London Olympics.

The Jamaican women added the 4x100-meter relay title to their
Tokyo Olympic collection after sweeping the podium in the 100-meter
final. The Jamaican team won in a national record 41.02 seconds. It was
the second-fastest time in history and ended the US.team's push for
a third consecutive Olympic gold in the event. The US won silver followed by Great Britain who took bronze.

Slovenia's Janja Garnbret claimed the first gold medal in women's climbing on Friday, solidifying her dominance in the field, as the sport's debut appearance at the Olympic Games this week drew to a close.

Japan's Miho Nonaka won silver, while compatriot Akiyo Noguchi took home the bronze in her final appearance as a competitive climber.

In athletics, world record holder Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda won the men's 5,000 meters, pulling away on the penultimate lap to take the gold. The victory will be nice consolation after he won silver in the 10,000-meter distance.

Kenya's Faith Kipyegon set a new Olympic record in the women's 1,500 meters, winning with a time of 3:53.11. 

Poland's Dawid Tomala dominated the 50-kilometer race walk at the Tokyo Games to take an astonishing gold unchallenged in only his second attempt at the longest distance. Tomala took the lead by the 30-kilometer mark to triumph with 3:50:08, and held a Polish flag for the final kilometer. Meanwhile, Italy Antonella Palmisano took gold in the women's 20-kilometer race walk a day after compatriot Massimo Stano won the men's race.

On the cycling track, the Netherlands finished 1-2 in the men's 200-meter sprint final, with Harrie Lavreysen winning the gold and Jeffrey Hoogland the silver. Meanwhile, Britain's cycling team took gold in the women's madison.

United States duo April Ross and Alix Klineman won the women’s beach volleyball gold medal, defeating the Australia’s Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy. Nicknamed the "A-Team," Ross and Klineman dropped only one set in Tokyo.

The Netherlands reclaimed their gold medal in women's field hockey, beating Argentina 3-1 in the final. The Dutch, who finished runners-up at the 2016 Games in Rio, have now won gold in three of the last four Olympics.

In the heavyweight boxing final (81-91 kilogramms), Cuba's Julio la Cruz, who was shot during a robbery just a few years ago, won his second Olympic gold with victory over Russia's Muslim Gadzhimagomedov on unanimous points. He adds the Tokyo title to his Rio 2016 light-heavyweight crown.

On the rock wall, Slovenia's Janja Garnbret won the first ever gold medal in the women's combined. 

Germany update

Germany's table tennis team came up short in the men's team final, taking silver after losing to China three matches to zero. After Timo Boll and Patrick Franziska lost the opening doubles match to Xu Xin and Ma Long, Germany was put under pressure once singles bronze medalist Dimitrij Ovtcharov fell to Fan Zhengdong. Boll, 40, held on in his match against Ma, who won the men's singles gold, but ultimately fell in four sets.

Twenty-nine years after current national team coach Ronald Weigel's bronze coup at the Olympics in Barcelona, Jonathan Hilbert wrote his own chapter in the history of German walkers by taking silver in the final 50-kilometer race walk. The event is being dropped for the Paris 2024 Games in favor of a new mixed-gender event.

Other news from Tokyo 2020

Two Belarusian coaches who were involved in the effort to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to return to Minsk have been stripped of their Games accreditation and sent home by the International Olympic Committee.

COVID-19 cases continue to rise ahead of the closing weekend the Organizing Committee announced on Friday. In its daily information brief, it was confirmed that 29 people have tested positive for the virus, two less than Day 13 which set a new high since the start of the Games.
In total 382 people in connection with the Olympic Games have been infected.

jt,dv (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)