Olympics live updates: Simone Biles trains in Tokyo – The Washington Post

TOKYO — World No. 1 Novak Djokovic begins his quest this week for one of the rare top prizes missing from his resume — an Olympic gold medal — when he faces Bolivia’s Hugo Dellien at Ariake Tennis Park in the first round of the men’s singles tournament at the Tokyo Games.

Djokovic is the heavy favorite to win gold in Tokyo, and not just because of his 34-3 match record and three Grand Slam titles he’s won this year entering the Olympics. His two greatest rivals are both sitting out the Games, with Roger Federer bowing out due to a knee injury and Rafael Nadal taking time off with next month’s U.S. Open in his sights.

Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are all tied with a record 20 Grand Slam titles apiece, but winning gold in Tokyo would keep alive the Serb’s hopes of becoming just the second player to capture all four major titles and a gold medal in the same year. Only Steffi Graf has done so, in 1988.

“I’m not in contact with Steffi,” Djokovic said at a news conference Thursday, “but if you could contact her for me so she can tell me how she did it …”

There is one name the 34-year-old is glad to not see in the draw: Juan Martin del Potro. The Argentine, who has dealt with chronic injuries in the past few years, beat Djokovic in the bronze medal match at the London Games and in the first round in Rio in 2016. Djokovic won a bronze medal in 2008.

“I am happy that del Potro is not here … I wrote him that,” Djokovic joked. “But I’m happy to see him back on the tennis court.”

In the women’s singles tournament, Japan’s Naomi Osaka is set to make her return to the court after a mental health break against China’s Zheng Saisai.

Sha’Carri Richardson won’t be running in the Olympics after failing a drug test nearly three weeks ago, but her star power remains undiminished.

She is part of a new Beats by Dre ad campaign that teamed her with Kanye West. In a new video clip, Richardson is shown warming up for a race, settling into the starting blocks and preparing to take off to the sound of a song by West, who also edited the brief piece.

The lyrics are from “No Child Left Behind” on West’s new album, “Donda,” with the refrain, “He’s done miracles on me.”

“There will be ups and down in life,” she wrote on Instagram, “but it’s important to remember to RUN YOUR OWN RACE.”

Richardson ran a 10.86-second 100 in qualifying for the Olympics, but tested positive for THC, the chemical found in marijuana. Although the drug is legal in many states, THC is a banned substance for Olympians and Richardson was suspended from the sport for a month. She took responsibility for her decision to use marijuana, saying she did so after learning of the death of her biological mother.

Taylor Crabb, an American beach volleyball player, will not compete in the Games after testing positive for the coronavirus.

Crabb said he had been taking “every precaution, getting vaccinated and following protocols” in an Instagram post. In his place, Tri Bourne will compete with Jake Gibb. Crabb said he was “symptom-free, thankfully, but deeply disappointed.”

“I’ve faced adversity before and I will face it again,” he continued, “but it doesn’t take the sting out of the situation. I want Jake to play in his fourth Olympic Games and I want him to bring home a medal. Tri Bourne, an incredible athlete, person and close friend, will be competing alongside Jake and filling my spot on Team USA. While there is no question that I’m devastated to not be competing, I’ve now taken on a new role — supporting my new team, [Coach] Rich [Lambourne], Jake and Tri. I want to send positive vibes and negative test results to all athletes here in Tokyo — stay healthy and enjoy every moment.”

Crabb tested positive upon his arrival at the Tokyo airport last weekend and subsequent tests also were positive. The beach volleyball tournament begins Saturday at Shiokaze Park. Gibb and Bourne begin play Sunday night against Italy.

Put these Olympics back in the space where they were originally envisioned in 2013, when Tokyo won the bid. Even then, in that blissfully naive world, it was reasonable to ask: Should this be happening at all?

The Olympics have outgrown themselves, grotesquely so. That is true in normal times. In a pandemic, it is laid bare. In a lead-in in which the drip-drip-drip of news has been unrelentingly negative, it seems particularly stark.

“We are actually facing a lot of challenges right now,” Toshiri Muto, the Tokyo2020 CEO, said Thursday.

“I guess there are still a lot of people that are not feeling easy about the opening of the Games,” added Seiko Hashimoto, the organizing committee’s president.

That’s the reality of these Olympics, even before they start. They will be monitored not just to see whether the coronavirus spreads through the Olympic Village and through the Japanese population, which isn’t as vaccinated as it could be. But they also will be scrutinized for how the athletes respond to the opportunity afoot, however bizarre it might be. If the Games’s slogan of “United by Emotion” means anything, what emotion — in the midst of all this — might unite the athletes?

TOKYO — Australian star Kaylee McKeown, the top-ranked swimmer in the world this year in the women’s 200-meter individual medley, has scratched from that event at the Olympics to focus on her backstroke races, Aussie Coach Rohan Taylor told reporters Thursday at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.

“It’s a big call … and I respect the decision,” Taylor said two days before the start of the Olympic swim meet.

McKeown, 20, would have been a medal favorite in the 200 IM, in which she was expected to battle Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu for the gold. Her scratching left the Australian team, which has its sights set on unseating the United States for world supremacy at these Games, without an entrant in either of the women’s IM events in Tokyo.

However, McKeown remains the gold medal favorite in both the 100-meter and 200-meter backstrokes. She is ranked No. 1 in the world in both this year and set the world record at 100 meters during the Australian Olympic trials last month. She is also expected to swim the backstroke leg in both the women’s and the mixed medley relays.

However, swimming that program plus the 200 IM would have left her with “doubles” — two races in the same session — on both Monday and Tuesday.

TOKYO — Inside Tokyo’s shining new Olympic venues, thousands of seats rest folded in ready anticipation for fans who will never come. The Japanese government’s decision this month to not allow even local spectators into competitions apparently came too late for organizers to stop their preparations.

Walks through some of the facilities in the Tokyo Bay zone have uncovered soaring sections of steel stands with plastic seats silently waiting to be filled. Tucked in the seats of the sun-splashed Ariake Urban Sports Park’s skateboard facility, for instance, are special silver seating pads, designed to cool spectators’ backsides, that Tokyo 2020 organizers had hoped to pass out.

Who knows how long the pads will linger there. For the next week? The next month? Until the stands — which are temporary — are dismantled and hauled away? Will someone actually remove the pads? Or will they stay strapped to the chair bottoms as the seats are taken off to whatever place they go next?

At the spectacular three-on-three basketball arena inside the Aomi Urban Sports Park, the cooling pads have been used to spell out the name “Aomi” in a socially distant hope they will be used — which they will not.

Instead, it seems the Games will go on in the ghost-like silence of the bright blue, orange and green seats and the silver seat cushions designed to cool the behinds of the fans who will never sit upon them.

Ariarne Titmus was just 15, just beginning to emerge as a freestyle prodigy in Australia, just about to have her mind blown by an American swimmer four years older splashing across her TV screen. It was August 2016, the summer of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and Katie Ledecky was at the height of her powers. They swam all the same events, Titmus and Ledecky, but the former had never seen anyone swim them like the latter.

“I remember watching her races,” Titmus said, “and thinking, ‘This chick is nuts.’”

Ledecky has redefined the outer limits of athletic potential during her historic career, breaking convention with her stroke and her training and applying a sprinter’s mentality to her sport’s longest races, so it was inevitable that someday someone would come along — young, hungry and emboldened by her example — to knock her off her throne.

Based on recent performance, betting odds and popular opinion, it’s possible, even probable, that day has arrived.

TOKYO — Michael Andrew, the only member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team known to be unvaccinated against the coronavirus, is doing “awesome” in navigating Tokyo 2020’s enhanced health and safety protocols, head men’s coach Dave Durden said Thursday.

Among those measures, according to Durden: Andrew has at times practiced at the Tokyo Aquatic Centre with “minimal” other people around.

“I feel very comfortable about what he’s doing, where he’s at, how he’s operating,” Durden said two days before the start of the Olympic swim meet. “Even today, he was over at the pool with very minimal people. And that was a little bit by his schedule. We’re looking at a couple things now as coaches: Trying to get him to swim fast, that’s our utmost priority for him. Continuing to have him feel safe, continuing to have the athletes around him feel safe. I feel good about what we’re doing with our precautions.”

Maya DiRado, a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team who is now retired, was critical of Andrew’s decision to remain unvaccinated, saying in a Twitter thread she was “disappointed” Andrew would put “even a bit of risk on his teammates for his own perceived well-being.”

Asked Thursday whether any of Andrew’s current U.S. teammates have expressed any resentment towards Andrew, Durden replied, “No resentment.”

TOKYO — U.S. gymnastics star Simone Biles, the defending Olympic all-around champion, successfully trained her Yurchenko double pike vault during Thursday’s formal practice session at Ariake Gymnastics Centre. Biles had too much power and rolled backward on her first attempt, but then she nailed the vault, which has the highest difficulty value in the world.

No female gymnast had ever performed a double-flipping vault in competition until Biles did so in May at the U.S. Classic. Most of her peers do a Yurchenko vault, which means there is a round-off onto the springboard and a back handspring onto the table, but they only do one flip while adding as many as two-and-a-half twists.

If Biles successfully completes this skill in competition here in Tokyo, it will be named for her. She already has four eponymous skills — another vault, a double-twisting double tuck dismount on beam, a double layout with a half twist on floor and a triple-twisting double tuck on floor.

Biles will be the favorite to win the gold medal on vault, even if she doesn’t perform the Yurchenko double pike in the event final. During this training session, she also practiced an Amanar (a Yurchenko with a two-and-a-half twist) and a Cheng (a round-off onto the springboard, then a half twist onto the vault and a front flip with a one-and-a-half twist off the table).