Women send powerful message in Olympic track and field
By EDDIE PELLS

August 8, 2021

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The United States team of Allyson Felix, Athing Mu, Dalilah Muhammad and Sydney Mclaughlin, from left, celebrate winning the gold medal in the final of the women's 4 x 400-meter relay at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 7, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


TOKYO (AP) — They set records everyone saw coming and others that surprised the experts.

They suffered, and battled, and spoke their truth in ways that hadn’t been heard before.

Over nine days at the near-empty Olympic Stadium, the women of track and field delivered a memorable show, both inside the lines and out.

These are some of the athletes who defined the meet in Tokyo: Allyson Felix, Sydney McLaughlin, Sifan Hassan, Raven Saunders, Elaine Thompson-Herah.

Theirs was a sport in need of a good boost, not only because of the year-long delay sparked by the virus, but because no matter when they returned, Usain Bolt would no longer draw eyes to the track simply by showing up.

The women delivered — not so much with the feel-good, dance-a-minute vibe that Bolt brought, but with a series of inspiring performances and messages that showed the heart of their sport was still beating strong.

Some highlights included:

Gold medalist Sifan Hassan, of Netherlands, kisses her medal during the medal ceremony for the women's 10,000-meters at the 2020 Olympics. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

— Hassan and her unrelenting journey toward three medals — two gold and one bronze

 — in three of the longest races held on the track.

She started with gold in the 5,000 meters, then came back with bronze in the 1,500. She closed the show Saturday with a gold-medal run in the 10,000 — one in which her vision was so clouded by exhaustion that she admitted she could not see the finish line.

“I’m so happy,” she said after the odyssey — six races over eight nights covering 65 laps and 24 kilometers — was finally complete “I’m relieved. I’m finished. I can sleep.”

Sydney McLaughlin, of the United States, wins the women's 400-meter hurdles final at the 2020 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

— McLaughlin, whose back-and-forth duals in the 400-meter hurdles with U.S. teammate Dalilah Muhammad reached a crescendo at the Olympics.

It was a race that had been much-anticipated and all but preordained to again reset the world record that one or the other had broken in three previous showdowns.

And they lived up to the hype. McLaughlin lowered her own mark to 51.46 seconds. Just as impressively, Muhammad’s silver-medal time of 51.58 would have been a world record, too.

“I think it’s two athletes wanting to be their best,” McLaughlin said, “and knowing there’s another great girl who’s going to help you get there.”

— The sprinters were fast through the leadup to the Olympics, so it wasn’t all that surprising to see that pace keep going in Tokyo.

Elaine Thompson-Herah, of Jamaica, wins the final of the women's 200-meters at the 2020 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

But while most of the pre-Games buzz went to Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (100) and American Gabby Thomas (200), each of whom briefly staked their claim as the second-fastest women in history at their respective distances, it was Thompson-Herah who wound up there in the end.

After a slow start to the season because of an Achilles injury, Thompson-Herah swept the 100 and 200 sprints for the second straight time. One more like that and she’ll match Bolt.

She ran the 200 in 21.53 and set the Olympic record in the 100: 10.61 seconds. Though that record might not be the most formidable of the marks Florence Griffith Joyner set a generation ago, in 1988, it had been around every bit as long.

Flo Jo’s world records of 10.49 and 21.34 still stand. But for how long?

“By the Olympic finish, I’ll probably see what I’ve done,” said Thompson-Herah, who at 29, assures us she is not done yet. “At this moment, I’m just a normal girl.”

Raven Saunders, of the United States, poses with her silver medal on women's shot put at the 2020 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

— The story of Raven Saunders was inspiration for anyone who has been overlooked or left behind. The Black, gay American shot putter started wearing “Incredible Hulk” masks to the field — a way of projecting her fierce competitive spirit, but also a lighter side underneath.

After she received her silver medal, Saunders crossed her arms and formed an “X” on the medals stand. “The intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet,” she explained.

It was the sort of message many believe should not only be tolerated, but embraced, when Olympic athletes get their all-too-short time in the spotlight. The IOC, which after much debate and discussion over the past two years still chose to ban such demonstrations, said it would look into it. Any probe was set aside when Saunders’ mother died unexpectedly only hours after she won the medal.

— And Felix closed the show.

For five Olympics spanning 16 — make that 17 — years, she was epitome of class and speed. At 35 years old, she called it a career, but not without doing what she does better than any runner alive: Winning medals.

Her bronze in the 400 and gold in the 4x400 relay gave her 11. She now has more than any track athlete in history, save a Finnish distance runner, Paavo Nurmi, who won 12 between 1920 and 1928.

Felix has more to do. Since having her baby, Cammy, in 2018 she has transformed herself into one of the most outspoken advocates for women in sports.

“I feel like it’s definitely been a journey for me to get to the point where I guess I had the courage to do so,” Felix said.

She earned the platform with two decades of racing in which she won some, and lost some, and kept on coming back for more.

Now, it’s time to see who takes her place.

Earlier in the meet, someone asked Muhammad, the hurdler, what she thought about all this women’s dominance at the track - of America’s seven gold medals in track and field, they won five.

“Women do it better,” she quipped.

After watching them conquer records, overcome obstacles and make their messages heard over nine days and nights at the Olympic track, it was hard to say she was wrong.

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Russian rhythmic dynasty topples, Bulgaria gets the gold

By CLAIRE GALOFARO

August 8, 2021

Russian Olympic Committee's rhythmic gymnastics' team performs during the rhythmic gymnastics group all-around final at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

TOKYO (AP) — The Russian rhythmic gymnastics juggernaut collapsed at the Tokyo Olympics, with dramatic back-to-back losses that sparked furious allegations of injustice in a sport famous for twinkling costumes, techno remixes and hoops looping through the air.

Russia had won every gold medal in rhythmic gymnastics since 2000. But it’s total defeat this year began Saturday, when Linoy Ashram of Israel won gold in the individual competition, edging out of a pair of Russian identical twins who were the favorites heading into Tokyo. Dina Averina placed second and her sister, Arina, fell to fourth.

In Sunday’s group competition, Russia tumbled again into second place, losing the gold to Bulgaria. Italy took the bronze medal.

“It’s so unreal, we cannot believe it. I don’t know what to say,” Bulgarian gymnast Stefani Kiryakova said. “This is the happiest moment ever.”

The rhythmic gymnastics group finals are a two-part competition for groups of five women. Part ballet, part gymnastics, part circus, the event begins with the teams dancing with balls, then moves on to a set of hoops and clubs.

Bulgaria pulled ahead after the first routine, performed to a lively Bulgarian folk song called “Water Cosmos Earth.” Their orange-red balls looked like fire as they soared through the air. The Russians performed to traditional opera in pink, blue and gold costumes that made them look like spinning toy dolls.

The group performances, each a spectacle of 2 1/2 minutes, are so packed with flying objects and women twisting and cartwheeling across each other it’s difficult for the untrained eye to comprehend its acrobatic intricacies. The gymnasts often move as perfect mirrors of each other, like synchronized swimmers without water.

Italy’s bronze medal-winning team is known as “the butterflies,” and gymnast Alessia Maurelli said they spend years learning to move as one.

“We are only one thing, only one person, only one butterfly,” she said.

In the second round of the group competition, the teams throw and catch three hoops and two pairs of clubs. Bulgaria performed in dazzling red corset-like costumes to the soundtrack from the ballet Spartacus. The gymnasts spun over each other with hoops around their ankles, windmilling them across the competition floor to be caught by teammates dozens of feet away.

The Russians hoped to pull ahead with a performance to another opera composition, spinning and throwing the hoops and clubs in perfect synchronization. At one point, three gymnasts bent at the waist, and their teammate rolled across their backs.

But as the scores appeared on the arena’s screen, the Russian gymnasts wept, one dropped her head into hands as the Bulgarians jumped in shocked triumph.

“We have very mixed emotions, of course there is joy but there is also sadness,” Russian gymnast Anastasiia Maksimova said after the competition, tears still in her eyes. “We competed at our maximum and we were fighting for our country, we were fighting for our individual gymnasts, we were fighting for our team, and we were fighting for our coaches. We did what we could.”

The reaction back home in Russia has been brutal. The country is barred from using its name, flag or anthem at the Olympics because of a doping scandal. Its athletes compete under the banner of ROC, short for Russian Olympic Committee.

Social media discussions have been full of allegations of a conspiracy to hurt Russia’s medal count and some lawmakers have weighed in with their own theories. Head coach Irina Viner-Usmanova told the RIA Novosti state news agency Sunday that “everyone understood perfectly well that this was meant to happen, that Russia’s hegemony had to be stopped.”

The very night an Israeli won the individual competition, ROC president Stanislav Pozdnyakov called on the International Gymnastics Federation to do an inquiry into the judging.

“Our staff and lawyers have already drawn up a request and sent it to the leadership of the International Gymnastics Federation,” Pozdnyakov wrote on Instagram Saturday.

Dina Averina, the 22-year-old gymnast who won the silver medal, also said shortly after the competition that she believed the judges had not been fair to her from the very start of the competition, when Ashram quickly took the lead. The post-Olympic photo she chose to post on her Instagram captures her in the moment she learned she’d lost, still in a bedazzled red leotard and a tight bun atop her head, standing with her arms crossed and her brow furrowed.

She later gave an emotional interview with sports broadcaster Match TV: “It hurts and it’s painful that there was unfair judging today,” she said, and noted that Ashram dropped her ribbon near the end of the competition, a major mistake in the sport. “I got through all of the disciplines more or less cleanly, properly, and came second. I’m hurt by the injustice, I support honest sport.”

Russian teammate Anastasia Bliznyuk, who performed as part of the five-woman group, also said after Sunday’s competition that they executed their difficult routine without any major mistakes, and usually when they do so, they win.

But not this time.

The winners who took home gold instead of the Russians said they felt like they were in a dream.

“It means everything,” Kiryakova said. “We put so much into these five years, so much work. We always believed we would be here, but it’s still so unreal.”

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AP Sports Writer James Ellingworth contributed to this report.

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