Brazil’s first gold medalist overcome with emotion after upset victory

Rio de Janeiro, Aug 9 (IANS) Brazilian female athletes are ruling the ongoing Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, leaving men’s teams behind by miles.

On Monday, all that struggle and hard work paid off, all the humiliation washed away as she raised her arms to the deafening cheers at the Carioca Arena 2 after beating the Mongolian opponent.

Later on Tuesday, Phelps looks to win gold medal No. 20 when he swims in the 200-meter butterfly against South African Chad le Clos, who beat Phelps in London; the US women’s gymnastics team goes for gold in the team competition; and Lochte is set to make his Rio debut in the preliminaries of the men’s 4×200-meter relay.

SILVER FOR U.S. DIVERS: China easily won its second gold medal in diving at the Rio Olympics, dominating the men’s 10-meter synchronized event while showing the rest of the world how to barely make a splash.

Silva, a black woman who grew up on the Cidade de Deus slum, coincidentally located quite near the arena where she was crowned Olympic champion, overcame a number of challenges to be a professional judoka, and faced a string of racist threats when she was eliminated from the 2012 Games in London, which nearly made her abandon the sport.

A day after adding a record 19th gold medal to his collection, Michael Phelps is swimming the 200 meter butterfly semifinal Monday night and fellow American Katie Ledecky is swimming the women’s 200 meter freestyle. It had turned a murky green since Monday night’s events.

RUGBY STUNNER: Sonny Bill Williams was helped off with an ankle injury during New Zealand’s shocking 14-12 loss to Japan in its first game of rugby sevens. King beat Efimova in the final and crowed afterward about a clean victory.

“I am still young and I want to feel like I did yesterday more times”, she said. The trio of pros bucked 112 years of amateur competition at the Olympics this year. Also in the opening threesome: Graham DeLaet of Canada, which IGF President Peter Dawson referred to as the defending champion at the Olympics.

BRAZIL BLEAK: It has come to this for the Brazilian men’s soccer team: The fans are so disappointed with the team that they heckled football icon Neymar and chanted the name of the women team’s star during a lackluster, scoreless tie against Iraq over the weekend. Brazil is now facing elimination – a prospect that once seemed unthinkable in the soccer-obsessed Olympic host country.

BILES BROUHAHA: NBC gymnastics announcer Al Trautwig has come under fire on social media over comments he made about the adoptive parents of American gymnast Simone Biles.

A world champion at 15, she went to the 2012 Games in London to compete for Brazil and was one of the country’s few medal hopes there. Trautwig said, “to set the record straight, Ron and Nellie are Simone’s parents”. Windsurfers sped across the waves toward Flamengo Beach in a fresh breeze, against the imposing backdrop of Sugarloaf Mountain.

The prize was won by Rafaela Silva in the under-57-kilogram class of judo.

Other women already made history in this edition of the Olympic Games: judoka Majlinda Kelmendi won the first Olympic medal for Kosovo in Brazil, which does not recognise Kosovo’s independence.

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