The Tokyo Olympics got off to a busy start Tuesday at the Tokyo Aquatics Center with a trio of high-profile finals in the men’s and women’s swimming.   In the women’s 100-meter breaststroke, the highly anticipated race between Lilly King of the United States, who won the event in the 2016 Rio Olympics, and Tatjana Schoenmaker of South Africa ended in an upset when Lydia Jacoby, King’s 17-year-old teammate, edged both women to win the gold. Schoenmaker finished in second place to win the silver medal while King ended in third, taking home the bronze medal.  Hundreds of people packed into a railroad terminal in Jacoby’s hometown of Seward, Alaska, launched into a wild celebration as they watched her come from behind in the last lap overtake Schoenmaker.STAND UP ALASKA!17-year-old Lydia Jacoby WINS GOLD, and everybody’s celebrating! #TokyoOlympics x @USASwimming?: NBC?: https://t.co/GFrdWbcFoO?: NBC Sports App pic.twitter.com/leYOC2Mzju— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) July 27, 2021Jacoby is the first swimmer from the remote northwestern state to qualify for a Summer Olympics.   In another surprise finish, Ryan Murphy of the United States finished third in the men’s 100-meter backstroke final, as teammates Evgeny Rylov and Kliment Kolesnikov of the Russian Olympic Committee, or the ROC, finished in first and second place respectively. Murphy had hoped to repeat his 2016 gold medal Rio performance, but took the bronze medal instead. His loss also ended a streak of six consecutive U.S. wins in the 100-meter backstroke dating back to 1996.   Meanwhile, Australia’s Kaylee McKeown won the women’s 100-meter backstroke and set a new Olympic record of 57.47 seconds. Canada’s Kylie Masse won the silver medal while Regan Smith of the United States took the bronze medal.   And British swimmers Tom Dean and Duncan Scott won the gold and silver medals, respectively, in the men’s 200-meter freestyle final. Brazil’s Fernando Scheffer won the bronze medal.   Yet another upset occurred Tuesday in women’s tennis as Japan’s Naomi Osaka, the world’s second-ranked player, suffered a shocking 6-1 6-4 defeat to Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic in the third round. Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam winner and a favorite to win gold for her native country, struggled during the match with 32 unforced errors. In other Olympic events Tuesday, Flora Duffy of Bermuda won the women’s triathlon in 1:55:36 (one hour, 55 minutes, 36 seconds), which included a 1,500-meter swim, 40-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run. Duffy’s gold medal victory is the first for the Caribbean island nation, and the second-ever Olympic medal since boxer Clarence Hill won bronze in the 1976 Montreal Games. Georgia Taylor-Brown won the silver medal, while Katie Zaferes of the United States won bronze.   Another historic gold medal victory occurred Monday in women’s weightlifting, when Hidilyn Diaz of the Philippines won the 55-kilogram division to win the first-ever gold medal for the Pacific archipelago. Diaz also set two Olympic records when she lifted 127 kilograms in the clean and jerk section as well as an overall total of 224 kilograms.   And fencer Edgar Cheung won Hong Kong’s first Olympics gold medal in 25 years when he beat Italy’s Daniele Garozzo by a score of 15-11.   Two gold medal events will take place later Tuesday in Tokyo when the U.S. takes on host country Japan in women’s softball in Yokohama Baseball Stadium. And gymnast Simone Biles will seek to burnish her already legendary career when she leads the U.S. women in the overall team finals.   The United States and China are tied in the overall medal count with 19, while the Russian Olympic Committee has 15 and host country Japan has 13 medals. The U.S. and Japan are tied in the gold medal count with eight, followed by seven for China and 5 for the ROC.  Some information for this report came from Reuters and AFP. 
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China’s Jiang Ranxin and Pang Wei out-dueled their Russian rivals in a riveting contest to secure gold in the 10-meter air pistol mixed team event at the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday. The Chinese pair scored a 16-14 victory against newly minted women’s Olympic champion Vitalina Batsarashkina and Artem Chernousov at the Asaka Shooting Range. Jiang and Pang, bronze winners in their individual events in Tokyo, overcame an 8-4 deficit to lead 14-10 before the Russians staged a comeback to level the scores. The Chinese shooters, however, held their nerve to reach the 16-point mark and claim gold. Russian athletes are competing in Tokyo under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) as part of sanctions for several doping scandals. Ukraine won the bronze medal match after Olena Kostevych and Oleh Omelchuk beat Serbians Zorana Arunovic and Damir Mikec 16-12. South Korean pistol great Jin Jong-oh will return empty-handed from his fifth, and possibly final, Olympics as his pairing could not get through the qualification round. The four-time Olympic gold medalist failed to qualify for the final of the men’s individual event on Saturday. 
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Bermuda has been sending athletes to the Olympics since 1936. Until Tuesday, the Atlantic island’s highest honor was a bronze medal won 45 years ago. Flora Duffy changed that in just less than two hours, swimming, cycling and running through the wind and rain around Tokyo Bay to win the Olympic women’s triathlon for Bermuda’s first gold medal. A self-governing British overseas territory with a population of less than 65,000, Bermuda has two athletes competing in Tokyo: Duffy and men’s rower Dara Alizadeh. It is the smallest contingent Bermuda has ever sent to the Summer Games. Bermuda hadn’t medaled at the Olympics since Clarence Hill’s bronze in heavyweight boxing in Montreal in 1976. “I think (the medal) is bigger than me. It’s going to inspire the youth of Bermuda and everyone back home that competing on the world stage from a small island is really possible,” said Duffy, a Bermuda native who grew up there. Duffy, 33, had never finished higher than eighth in her previous three Olympic tries. But the two-time former world triathlon series champion was one of the favorites for gold and was among the leaders Tuesday for the entire race. She closed out the victory with a dominant final leg to finish in 1 hour, 55:36 minutes. Duffy pumped her arms over her head as she hit the final 50 meters to the finish line, then held her head in her hands as she pushed through the victory banner and collapsed. She got up to cheer on her competitors. “I tried to just keep my composure and not allow my mind to drift to the fact that this was really happening until about the last kilometer of the run,” Duffy said. “I saw my husband — he’s my coach — on the side of the road and just gave him a little smile. From there I just sort of allowed all the emotions to come.” Georgia Taylor-Brown of Britain, who got a tire puncture near the end of the cycling stage but rode through it, finished more than a minute behind. American Katie Zaferes was third. “I just rode on the flat,” Taylor-Brown said. “I did panic … the whole race I had been right at the front.” Zaferes, who was selected for the U.S. team despite a string of disappointing finishes over the last year, backed up the decision to bring her to Tokyo by winning bronze. “I’m so happy that I was here,” said Zaferes, whose father died in April. “To have the confidence I would be ready for today and to be able to execute that and be on the podium. I’m just so proud.” Ukrainian Yuliya Yelistratova did not compete after the International Testing Agency reported Sunday that she had tested positive for the banned blood-booster EPO in a sample collected at a June competition. Yelistratova had competed in the two previous Olympics. 
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The United States beat Japan 2-1 on Monday in an inconsequential game to end round-robin play.But the U.S. team’s failure to record a hit against a third-string Japanese pitcher until the sixth inning demonstrated the challenge it faces in the gold-medal matchup between the two teams.U.S. batters did race their way into three hits and a run against Yamamoto Fujita in the sixth, and Kelsey Stewart shot a tie-breaking homer to end the game an inning later.But, as United States’ 3-1 loss to Japan in the Beijing 2008 finals showed, counting on lucky hits late in the game delivers inconsistent returns. Failing to hit in key moments foiled the United States against Yukiko Ueno of Japan in 2008, the last time softball appeared at the Olympics.Ueno, 39, will be back in Tuesday’s final, as will U.S. hurlers Cat Osterman and Monica Abbott.Overall, the United States finished round-robin play on Monday scoring nine runs on 27 hits with Stewart’s blast over right their lone home run. By contrast, Japan had double the runs on 26 hits, including six homers, and stranded fewer runners.On Monday, both teams used their back-up pitchers and several bench players. The win means the United States will bat after Japan in the final.The rivals went unbeaten against their other four competitors at Tokyo 2020 to set up the 2008 rematch, when Japan became the only team other than the United States to capture gold. The two rivals also have met for the last seven biennial World Baseball Softball Confederation world championships, with U.S. taking five of them.Tokyo 2020 organizers returned softball to the Olympics, and both the hosts and their opponent have said in the long lead-up to the postponed competition that they hope an exciting final can boost interest in the sport and make it a recurring fixture.Later Monday, Mexico beat Australia, 4-1, to face Canada in Tuesday’s bronze medal game.Clouds hung over the ballpark on Monday, and Tuesday’s forecast calls for rain.Canada has played in each Olympics, but never placed higher than fourth. Mexico made their Olympics debut this year.
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On the Olympic podium stood three teenage girls — 13, 13 and 16 — with weighty gold, silver and bronze medals around their young necks, rewards for having landed tricks on their skateboards that most kids their age only get to see on Instagram.After decades in the shadows of men’s skateboarding, the future for the sport’s daring, trailblazing women suddenly looked brighter than ever at the Tokyo Games on Monday.It’s anyone’s guess how many young girls tuned in to watch Momiji Nishiya of Japan win the debut Olympic skateboarding event for women, giving the host nation a sweep of golds in the street event after Yuto Horigome won the men’s event.But around the world, girls trying to convince their parents that they, too, should be allowed to skate can now point to the 13-year-old from Osaka as an Olympic-sized example of skateboarding’s possibilities.A champion of few words — “Simply delighted,” is how she described herself — Nishiya let her board do the talking, riding it down rails taller than she is. She said she’d celebrate by asking her mother to treat her to a dinner of Japanese yakiniku barbecue.The silver went to Rayssa Leal, also 13 — Brazil’s second silver in skateboarding after Kelvin Hoefler finished in second place on Sunday in the men’s event.Both Nishiya and Leal became their countries’ youngest-ever medalists. The bronze went to 16-year-old Funa Nakayama of Japan.”Now I can convince all my friends to skateboard everywhere with me,” Leal said.She first caught the skateboarding world’s attention as a 7-year-old with a video on Instagram of her attempting, and landing, a jump with a flip down three stairs while wearing a dress with angel wings.”Skateboarding is for everyone,” she said.But that hasn’t always been true for young girls, even among the 20 female pioneers who rode the rails, ramps and ledges at the Ariake Urban Sports Park.The field included Leticia Bufoni of Brazil, whose board was snapped in two by her dad when she was a kid to try to stop her from skating.She was 10.”I cried for hours,” she recalled. “He thought girls shouldn’t skate because he had never seen a woman skate before.”Bufoni added, half-joking, that getting him to relent had been harder than qualifying for the Tokyo Games.”So I want be that girl that the little girls can show their parents and be like, ‘She can skate. I want to be like her,'” Bufoni said.Annie Guglia of Canada said she didn’t see any other girls skate during her first two years on her board. The first contest she entered, at the age of 13, had no women’s category, so organizers had to create one for her.”And I won, because I was the only one,” the 30-year-old Guglia said. “We have come a long way.”Skaters predicted that by time the next Olympics roll around, in Paris in 2024, the women’s field will have a greater depth of talent and tricks, built on the foundations they laid in Tokyo.”It’s going to change the whole game,” U.S. skater Mariah Duran said. “This is like opening at least one door to, you know, many skaters who are having the conversations with their parents, who want to start skating.”I’m not surprised if there’s probably already like 500 girls getting a board today.”
Nishiya is going places with hers. She said she aims to be at the Paris Games “and win.””I want to be famous,” she said.But first — barbecue. Her delighted mom didn’t take much convincing.”I’ll definitely take her,” she said.
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First, the sun. Now: the wind and the rain.The Tokyo Olympics, delayed by the pandemic and opened under oppressive heat, are due for another hit of nature’s power: a typhoon arriving Tuesday morning that is forecast to disrupt at least some parts of the Games.“Feels like we’re trying to prepare for bloody everything,” said New Zealand rugby sevens player Andrew Knewstubb.Don’t worry, Japanese hosts say: In U.S. terms, the incoming weather is just a mid-grade tropical storm. And the surfers at Tsurigasaki beach say Tropical Storm Nepartak could actually improve the competition so long as it doesn’t hit the beach directly.But archery, rowing and sailing have already adjusted their Tuesday schedules. Tokyo Games spokesman Masa Takaya said there were no other changes expected.“It is a tropical storm of three grade out of five, so you shouldn’t be too much worried about that, but it is a typhoon in Japan interpretation,” Takaya said. “This is the weakest category, but this is still a typhoon so we should not be too optimistic about the impact of the course.”On the beach about 90 miles east of Tokyo, the competitors want the change in weather so long as the rain and wind don’t make total landfall. The surfing competition was delayed Monday because of low tide. But if the storm hits as expected, it could deliver waves twice as high as expected.“As a homeowner I say, ‘Oh no, stay away!’” said Kurt Korte, the official Olympic surfing forecaster. “But as a surfer, ‘OK, you can form if you stay out there,’ Everybody can agree a storm out in the distance is the best.”The Japan Meteorological Agency said Nepartak was headed northwest over the Pacific Ocean east of Japan on Monday with landfall expected Tuesday afternoon. The storm could bring strong winds, up to 5.9 inches (150 millimeters) of rainfall and high waves as it cuts across Japan’s northeastern region.In advance, organizers made the first major alterations to the Olympic archery schedule because of weather. There was an hour delay at the Beijing Games in 2008. Here, the Tuesday afternoon sessions have been postponed until Wednesday and Thursday.“We’ve heard that storm could be anything from rain or 80-mph wind,” said American archer Jack Williams.Added Brady Ellison, his teammate: “Unless there’s lightning, right here, we’ll shoot it. We’ll deal with whatever it’s going to be. Rain just starts to suck in general.”Beach volleyball plays in everything but lightning. Both the women’s final at the Beijing Games and men’s final at the Rio Games were held in heavy rain.At Ariake Tennis Park, center court has a retractable roof that can be closed for inclement weather, but play on outer courts would have to be suspended.“They can move every match, I think, if there is really going to be a typhoon with rain,” said Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 player in the world. “We never know. I guess they will maybe try to move six matches, but it depends how long the matches will be.”Any sort of rain — typhoon, tropical storm, or even light sprinkling — will be a wild swing from the first three days of the Games.Svetlana Gomboeva collapsed from heatstroke on the first day of archery but recovered to win a silver medal. Top-seeded Novak Djokovic and Medvedev, who who complained his first round match was “some of the worst” heat he’d ever played in, successfully leaned on the International Tennis Federation to give Olympics players extra time during breaks to offset the high temperatures.Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova had resorted to shoving bags of ice up her skirt, and fiddled with a tube blowing cold air next to her seat. At skateboarding, the intense sun turned the park into a furnace, radiating off the light concrete with such blinding effect that skaters complained the heat was softening the rubber joints on their wheel axles and making the boards harder to control.July and August in Japan are notoriously hot and humid. Japan has faced criticism for not accurately describing the severity and instead, during the bidding process, calling it mild and ideal.Daytime highs regularly hit 95 degrees (35 Celsius) but have exceeded 104 degrees (40 Celsius) in some places in recent years. The Environment Ministry began issuing heatstroke alerts in July 2020 for the Tokyo areas and in April for the entire nation.Japan reported 112 deaths from June to September last year, as well as 64,869 people taken to hospitals by ambulance for heat-related issues. Tokyo logged the largest number of heat stroke sufferers at 5,836 during the three-month period.Australian canoeist Jessica Fox, the gold medal favorite in the kayak slalom, said the wild weather swings have been a disruption to the Olympic event. “It is like a bath,” she said. “It is like paddling in bathwater.”
And the impending typhoon disruption?“I am a bit concerned about that,” Fox said. “I saw the surfers and they were all excited about the weather, which isn’t ideal for us.”If Tuesday’s bronze medal softball game is postponed, the Canada team worries it could get stuck in Japan because members had flights the following day.“We very much hope that the game goes (Tuesday) so that we can get on a plane and go home,” coach Mark Smith said. “As you probably know, with the pandemic, that flights are very hard to come by.”The weather extremes are just another obstacle Olympic organizers have faced during these beleaguered Games, already delayed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Asked on Monday if Tokyo officials feel they can’t catch a break, Takaya said they’ve had to be flexible.“I mean, you know, we’re supposed to react to any situation, that’s one of our jobs,” he said. “This is absolutely a regular exercise we have to face.”
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Madrid’s tree-lined Paseo del Prado boulevard and the adjoining Retiro park have been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, holding an online meeting from Fuzhou, China, backed the candidacy on Sunday that highlighted the green area’s introduction of nature into Spain’s capital. The influence the properties have had on the designs of other cities in Latin America was also applauded by committee members.”Collectively, they illustrate the aspiration for a utopian society during the height of the Spanish Empire,” UNESCO said.The Retiro park occupies 1.2 square kilometers in the center of Madrid. Next to it runs the Paseo del Prado, which includes a promenade for pedestrians. The boulevard connects the heart of Spain’s art world, bringing together the Prado Museum with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofía Art Center.The boulevard dates to the 16th century while the park was originally for royal use in the 17th century before it was fully opened to the public in 1848.”Today, in these times of pandemic, in a city that has suffered enormously for the past 15 months, we have a reason to celebrate with the first world heritage site in Spain’s capital,” said Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida.The site is No. 49 for Spain on the UNESCO list.Also on Sunday, the committee added China’s Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan, India’s Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, and the Trans-Iranian railway to the World Heritage list.World Heritage sites can be examples of outstanding natural beauty or manmade buildings. The sites can be important geologically or ecologically, or they can be key for human culture and tradition. 
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Jackie Mason, a rabbi-turned-comedian whose feisty brand of standup comedy led him to Catskills nightclubs, West Coast talk shows and Broadway stages, has died. He was 93. Mason died Saturday at 6 p.m. ET at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan after being hospitalized for more than two weeks, celebrity lawyer Raul Felder told The Associated Press. The irascible Mason was known for his sharp wit and piercing social commentary, often about the differences between Jews and gentiles, men and women and his own inadequacies. His typical style was amused outrage. “Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe,” he once joked. Another Mason line was: “Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows, marriage does.” About himself, he once said: “I was so self-conscious, every time football players went into a huddle; I thought they were talking about me.” Religious rootsMason was born Jacob Maza, the son of a rabbi. His three brothers became rabbis. So did Mason, who at one time had congregations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Comedy eventually proved to be a more persistent calling than God.  “A person has to feel emotionally barren or empty or frustrated in order to become a comedian,” he told The Associated Press in 1987. “I don’t think people who feel comfortable or happy are motivated to become comedians. You’re searching for something and you’re willing to pay a high price to get that attention.” Mason started in show business as a social director at a resort in the Catskills. He was the guy who got everybody up to play Simon Says, quiz games or shuffleboard. He told jokes, too. After one season, he was playing clubs throughout the Catskills for better money.  “Nobody else knew me, but in the mountains, I was a hit,” Mason recalled.  In 1961, the pint-sized comic got a big break, an appearance on Steve Allen’s weekly television variety show. His success brought him to The Ed Sullivan Show and other programs.  He was banned for two years from the Sullivan show when he allegedly gave the host the finger when Sullivan signaled to him to wrap up his act during an appearance on Oct. 18, 1964.  Mason’s act even carried him to Broadway, where he put on several one-man shows, including Freshly Squeezed in 2005, Love Thy Neighbor in 1996 and The World According to Me in 1988, for which he received a special Tony Award. “I feel like Ronald Reagan tonight,” Mason joked on Tony night. “He was an actor all his life, knew nothing about politics and became president of the United States. I’m an ex-rabbi who knew nothing about acting and I’m getting a Tony Award.”  Mason called himself an observer who watched people and learned. From those observations he said he got his jokes and then tried them out on friends. “I’d rather make a fool of myself in front of two people for nothing than a thousand people who paid for a ticket,” he told the AP.  A reliable presenceHis humor could leap from computers and designer coffee to then-Sen. John Kerry, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Donald Trump. He was able to articulate the average Joe’s anger, making the indignities of life seem funny and maybe just a little bit more bearable. “I very rarely write anything down. I just think about life a lot and try to put it into phrases that will get a joke,” he said. “I never do a joke that has a point that I don’t believe in. To me, the message and the joke is the same.”  On TV, Mason was a reliable presence, usually with a cameo on such shows as 30 Rock or The Simpsons or as a reliable guest on late night chat shows. He performed in front of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, and his show Fearless played London’s West End in 2012.  He portrayed a Jewish ex-pajama salesman in love with an Irish-Catholic widow portrayed by Lynn Redgrave in a series called Chicken Soup in 1989, but it didn’t last. During the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Scottish service hired Mason as a weekly commentator. Mason’s humor sometimes went too far, as when he touched off a controversy in New York while campaigning for GOP mayoral candidate Rudolph Giuliani against Democrat David Dinkins, who was Black. Mason had to apologize after saying, among other things, that Jews would vote for Dinkins out of guilt.  Felder, his longtime friend, told the AP that Mason had a Talmudic outlook on life: “That whatever you would say to him, he would start an argument with you.”  He is survived by his wife, producer Jyll Rosenfeld, and a daughter, Sheba. 
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