Canadian rugby sevens women defeat Fiji, fall to New Zealand to open Paris 2024 campaign
Canada's men's beach volleyball duo Sam Schachter, Dan Dearing post loss
Canada opened its Olympic women's rugby sevens campaign with mixed results in Paris on Sunday, taking a win and a loss.
Keyara Wardles scored the decisive try in Canada's first game, a 17-14 win over Fiji.
Florence Symonds and Charity Williams also touched, and Chloe Daniels was 1 for 3 on conversions.
The seventh-ranked Canadians had a 12-0 lead going into halftime, but No. 6 Fiji pushed in the second and added a try in extra time.
Williams had the lone try of the game for Canada and Asia Hogan-Rochester added the two extra points.
New Zealand finished the first day of competition atop Pool A with four points. China, the tournament's 12th seed, sat in second, tied with Canada on points at four. Fiji was fourth with two points.
Canada closes out pool play against China on Monday.
The top two teams from each of the three pools and the best two teams that placed third in their pools will go through to the tournament's quarterfinals on Tuesday. The medal games are scheduled for Tuesday night.
Mo Zhang wins opening round at 5th Olympics
Vancouver's Mo Zhang got her fifth Olympic Games started on Day 2, defeating Paulina Vega of Chile 4-0 (11-7, 11-7, 11-7, 11-8) in the women's singles round of 64 at the South Paris Arena. Canada's longest tenured Olympian at Paris 2024, the 35-year-old moves onto the second round to face either Nigeria's Fatimo Bello, or France's Jia Nan Yuen.
After finishing ninth in the singles competition at Tokyo 2020, Zhang looks to make another run for Canadian table tennis, with her second round match set for 4:00 a.m. ET on July 30.
Schachter, Dearing lose in beach volleyball
Canada's men's beach volleyball duo Sam Schachter and Dan Dearing lost 2-0 (21-17, 21-19) to reigning world champions Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner of the Czech Republic at Eiffel Tower Stadium.
The Czechs are seeded 5th and the Canadians 20th.
Schachter and Dearing are back on the sand on Wedneday at 2 p.m. ET to play. No. 8 Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Lanci of Brazil.
Holmgren 17th in cross-country mountain bike
In her Olympic debut for Canada, Isabella Holmgren earned a top-20 finish against the world's top cross-country mountain bike athletes in Elancourt, France.
The 19-year-old from Orillia, Ont., posted a time of one hour 33 minutes 43 seconds across 30.8 kilometres for 17th place on a sunny and warm afternoon at Elancourt Hill.
With Hardwood Ski and Bike hosting a watch party in Oro Station, Ont., Holmgren, who sat 21st early on, worked her way as high as 16th before slipping one spot on the seventh and final lap of the 4.4 km course built on a former landfill.
Pauline Ferrand-Prevot of France won gold in 1:26:02, with American Haley Batten (1:28:59) and Sweden's Jenny Rissveds (1:29:04) rounding out the medal podium.
Ferrand-Prevot has been trying to follow in the footsteps of Julie Bresset, who won mountain bike gold for France at the 2012 London Games. But after finishing 25th in that race, Ferrand-Prevot crashed hard in Rio four years later and failed to finish the race, and she could only manage a disappointing 10th in the rain at the pandemic-delayed 2021 Tokyo Games.
Batten was fined by the judges for breaking a rule on the final lap of her race, though she will no doubt gladly pay the modest penalty after her silver medal marked the best finish ever by an American rider.
Batten was jockeying for second place with Rissveds, well behind Ferrand-Prevot, when she went through a lane dedicated for taking on food and drink or stopping for mechanical problems. But after the judges reviewed the footage, they decided Batten had done neither and broke one of the rules of the race.
She was fined 500 Swiss francs, or about $565 US, for "failure to respect the instructions of the race organization or commissaries," though the judges apparently decided that the infraction was not serious enough to warrant a disqualification.
Holmgren, who began her competitive career at nine, told orilliamatters.com in early July racing at the Olympics has been a lifelong goal.
"It's pretty cool that it's happening sooner than I thought it would," said Holmgren, who finished her Olympic preparation with her Lidl-trek team at a camp in Andorra between France and Spain.
Holmgren clinched an Olympic spot by topping the women's podium at a recent World Cup race in the Czech Republic.
Orillia's 2023 athlete of the year was fresh off a pair of gold medals at the Mountain Bike World Cup in Les Gets, France.
Her parents, Lisa and Rob, who is also her coach, were in attendance at Elancourt Hill along with Isabella's twin sister Ava — also a competitive racer — and brothers Max and Gunnar, the 2023 Pan Am gold medallist who will compete in the men's cross-country race on Monday at 8:10 a.m. ET.
WATCH | How does mountain biking work at the Olympics?:
Japan's Yoshizawa wins women's street skateboard gold
Coco Yoshizawa, 14, and Liz Akama of Japan took gold and silver in women's street skateboarding at the Paris Olympics on Sunday and Rayssa Leal of Brazil got bronze to win her second medal in the sport.
Akama was in first place after landing her first two tricks before Yoshizawa slid down the big rails on the course on her fourth trick attempt, earning a score of 96.49 to pass her teammate.
The trick, which elicited gasps from the crowd, got the highest score of the day.
Yoshizawa was the last woman to finish the competition and she'd already won gold before she attempted her fifth trick. But she landed it anyway as a bit of a victory lap — raising her arms high above her head as she rolled toward her coach to celebrate.
Akama took the lead early in the finals after posting a 89.26 on her second run. And when she got a score of 92.62 on her first trick, she looked like the one to beat before Yoshizawa's late surge.
The 16-year-old Leal, who needed a late run in the preliminary round to make it into the finals, also made a run late in the last round to medal again after taking silver in the Tokyo Games. Leal was the youngest Brazilian ever to participate in the Olympics when she won at 13.
WATCH | How does street skateboarding work at the Olympics?:
South Sudan claims 1st-ever Olympic basketball win
As South Sudan players jogged onto the court on Sunday amid cheers from fans waving the flag of their home nation, Nuni Omot slowed, stopped and pressed his hand to the Paris 2024 logo embossed across the surface.
He and his teammates were officially Olympians. Less than two hours later, they were celebrating their country's first-ever Olympic win.
Carlik Jones scored 19 points and South Sudan rallied in the second half to beat Puerto Rico 90-79 in the Paris Olympics opener for both teams on Sunday in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France.
"We're not a secret anymore," South Sudan coach Royal Ivey said afterward.
Bright Stars 🇸🇸 shining brighter 🤩<br><br>This is what it means to South Sudan 🥹<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Paris2024?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Paris2024</a> x <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Basketball?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Basketball</a> <a href="https://t.co/C2Zi5NC8Fo">pic.twitter.com/C2Zi5NC8Fo</a>
—@FIBAIt was the culmination of a morning that began with officials playing the wrong national anthem for South Sudan before tipoff. But Omot said it only inspired them to play their best basketball.
"It gave us fuel. It gave us fuel to the fire," Omot said. "Obviously, we felt disrespected when that happened. ... I feel like for us we've got to continue to show the world what we're capable of."
South Sudan nearly pulled off a stunning exhibition upset of the U.S. leading into the start of the Olympics. It showed that same scrappiness Sunday against a Puerto Rico team it lost to in last year's World Cup.
Aussie cyclist undergoes surgery after fall during time trial
Australian cyclist Lucas Plapp underwent abdominal surgery overnight at a Paris hospital following a hard crash on rain-slicked roads during the Olympic time trial on Saturday, the Australian team said.
AusCycling, Australia's cycling governing body, confirmed the procedure early Sunday. No other details were available.
Plapp was among the last riders to start on the 32.4-kilometre course and was laying down a medal-worthy ride at the first time check, trailing then-leader and eventual bronze medallist Wout van Aert by just two seconds. But when Plapp reached a technical portion of the course, his bike slid out from under him and he crashed hard onto the pavement.
The crash was not shown on the race broadcast, but AusCycling said Plapp was conscious and moving afterward. He was lifted into the team vehicle and taken to the hospital for precautionary scans, and later he required the abdominal procedure.
The 23-year-old Plapp, who won bronze at the Tokyo Games as part of the Australian pursuit team, is the reigning national time trial and road race champion. He was supposed to ride alongside Simon Clarke in support of teammate Michael Matthews in the Olympic road race next Saturday.
Remco Evenepoel won the time trial, giving Belgium two riders on the podium, while Filippo Ganna of Italy finished second. But both the women's and men's races were marred by a series of crashes on a course made treacherous by the rain.
Among those who fell was American rider Chloe Dygert, the reigning time trial world champion, who remounted her bike and rallied to finish third behind gold medallist Grace Brown of Australia and Anna Henderson of Britain.
"If we were in Britain, these [conditions] would be absolutely perfect. The roads are better to take corners on. When we're in Spain, France or Italy, I feel like it's a little more icy," said Dygert, who still plans to compete in the road race and team pursuit this Olympics. "But for sure it definitely plays a factor into the race itself. And I think it totally changed the ballgame."
With files from Doug Harrison, Ben Steiner CBC Sports and The Associated Press
