The U.S. collected gold in men’s basketball and women’s soccer and earned three more golds in a huge night at the track on Saturday at the Paris Olympics.
Stephen Curry scored 24 points to lead Team USA over France 98-87 at Bercy Arena to win its fifth straight gold medal and 17th overall. France got 26 points from star Victor Wembanyama, but it wasn’t enough to earn the host nation its first gold medal in the sport.
The U.S. needed a rally to beat Serbia 95-91 in a compelling semifinal. In the final, Curry hit four 3-pointers in the last three minutes. When he made the last one, which pushed the lead to 96-87 with 35 seconds left, he put his hands to the side of his face in a “go to sleep” gesture.
“I think we might be the only team in the world whose fans are ashamed of them if they get a silver medal,” U.S. coach Steve Kerr said. “That’s the pressure that we face. But our players, and you saw Steph, they love the pressure. They appreciate this atmosphere, and they were fantastic.”
Kevin Durant, who became the first four-time men’s gold medalist in Olympic basketball history, added 15 points and LeBron James had 14.
It’s the fourth Olympic silver for France, which was runner-up to the Americans in 1948, 2000 and 2020. Wembanyama, this year’s NBA Rookie of the Year, cried as the U.S. celebrated. Later, Durant gave him a hug and the two talked for a couple of minutes.
Earlier Saturday, the U.S. women’s soccer team beat Brazil 1-0 on a second-half goal by Mallory Swanson to win its fifth Olympic gold medal and first since 2012 in London.
“We’ve grown so much,” said Swanson, who was making her 100th national team appearance. “And that’s really cool to me seeing that. We’ve grown on and off the field. And you keep probably hearing it — we’re playing with joy. We’re having so much fun and I’m just so happy.”
In the final night of events at Stade de France, the U.S. won both 4×400 relays, and Masai Russell took gold in a photo finish in the 100-meter hurdles.
The U.S. won 34 track medals in the Paris Games for the country’s most at a non-boycotted Olympics since the early 20th century, when there were more events and fewer countries. The 14 golds are the most in a non-boycotted Olympics since Bob Beamon, Tommie Smith and John Carlos led the U.S. to 15 wins in 1968.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas led the Americans to a 4.23-second win in the women’s 4×400 relay.
The gold medalists in the 400 hurdles and 200 meters took care of legs two and three for the United States, handing a 30-meter lead to Alexis Holmes, who didn’t lose any ground.
The U.S. finished in 3 minutes, 15.27 seconds, only 0.1 short of the world record.
The American men won gold in the same race in a much closer finish about 15 minutes earlier.
Rai Benjamin held off Letsile Tebogo on the anchor leg to give the men an Olympic-record time. Benjamin added this Olympic title to the one he claimed in the 400-meter hurdles a night earlier and prevented 200-meter champion Tebogo from giving Botswana another triumph over the Americans.
It was Tebogo, the 21-year-old sprinting sensation, who stole the spotlight — and the gold — from the U.S. in the 200 on Thursday, relegating Kenny Bednarek to silver and Noah Lyles, who tested positive for COVID-19, to bronze.
The U.S. quartet of Christopher Bailey, Vernon Norwood, Bryce Deadmon and Benjamin completed the four laps in 2 minutes, 54.43 seconds, nearly a second faster than the American 4×400 team ran at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And Saturday’s time was just 0.14 seconds off the world record set by the United States in 1993.
“Team USA have always had dominance over the 4×4,” Bailey said, “and we just wanted to keep it going.”
In the hurdles, Masia Russell beat Cyrena Samba-Mayela, whose silver medal marks the first of any color for France at the Olympic track meet.
In a close-as-can-be race down the straightaway, Russell finished in 12.33 seconds but had to wait 15 seconds to learn she had beaten the Frenchwoman by 0.01.
Defending champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, who competes for Puerto Rico, was another 0.02 back for bronze in front of a boisterous crowd the included French President Emmanuel Macron and Mick Jagger.
No cheers were louder than those for Samba-Mayela, who ended a shutout for the host country.
“I want to celebrate with the French public because they supported me and pushed me throughout all these Olympic Games,” Samba-Mayela said.
Boxer Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan won a gold medal in the women’s featherweight division Saturday night, following Imane Khelif’s lead a day earlier with a glittering response to the intense scrutiny faced by both fighters inside the ring and around the world over misconceptions about their womanhood.
Lin beat Julia Szeremeta of Poland 5:0 in the final at Roland Garros, capping her four-fight unbeaten run through Paris by ensuring that Taiwan’s first Olympic boxing medal is golden.
“I feel incredible,” Lin said after her fourth consecutive 5:0 win. “I want to thank everyone who has supported me, and thanks to my team and everyone in Taiwan. They gave me the power.”
On Friday, Khelif won Algeria’s first women’s boxing medal with a decisive victory in her own final, beating Yang Liu of China.
Both fighters persevered through an avalanche of criticism and uninformed speculation about their sex during the Paris tournament to deliver the best performances of their boxing careers. Lin won all four of her bouts 5:0, even if she didn’t win every round on every judge’s card as Khelif did.
Lydia Ko completed her Olympic medal collection with the most valuable of them all, a gold medal that puts the 27-year-old Kiwi into the LPGA Hall of Fame.
“I knew the next 18 holes were going to be some of the most important 18 holes of my life,” Ko said. “I knew being in this position was once in a lifetime.”
Ko built a five-shot lead on the back nine at Le Golf National as her closest pursuers all collapsed, and then had to hang on until the very end. Her lead down to one, Ko made a 7-foot birdie putt for a 1-under 71 and a two-shot victory.
Ko won the silver medal in Rio de Janeiro. She won the bronze in Tokyo. The victory pushed her career total to 27 points for the LPGA Hall of Fame, one of the strictest criteria for any shrine.
Cao Yuan defended his title in the men’s 10-meter platform and gave China an unprecedented sweep of the diving gold medals at the Paris Games.
The Big Red Machine won all eight golds at the Olympic Aquatics Centre, most of them with dominating victories.
That wasn’t the case in the final diving event of the Games. With teammate Yang Hao having an uncharacteristically poor day and Rikuto Tamai of Japan keeping the pressure on until a botched dive in the next-to-last round, the burden of completing the sweep fell entirely on Cao’s slender shoulders.
“I believe in myself,” Cao said through an interpreter. “I am very, very confident.”
