In the ring, Cuban Julio Cesar La Cruz beat Kazakhstan’s Adilbek Niyazymbetov to become his country’s first light-heavyweight Olympic champion in the only gold medal match of the day.
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The first United States of America sweep of Olympic shot put titles, with Michelle Carter becoming the first American woman to win the event a week ago today, Ryan Crouser setting an Olympic record 22.52 (73 feet, 10.75 inches) to win the men’s gold Thursday and teammate Joe Kovacs taking silver. Eaton, a two-time world champion, a world and Olympic record holder and the third man to repeat as Olympic decathlon champion, is the latest. “Be among (Muhammad) Ali and Pele”.
“I put my hope and trust in my coach and it paid off”. In the end, despite the freakish nature of the situation, they qualified easily in 41.77 seconds.
Veteran Asafa Powell just wanted to make sure that Bolt got the chance to run in the final on Friday.
“That is why it’s my last Olympics”, Bolt said.
“I don’t need to prove anything else”. In one session late Wednesday they’ve dubbed the “awesome hour”, the US team added six medals.
Perhaps none was bigger than Eaton’s. It was his second straight Olympic title in the two-day, 10-event endurance test.
Still, going into the 1,500 meters, the final event, Eaton had a slim 44-point lead over Kevin Mayer of France.
“She said, ‘You know, Ash, you can’t come to the Olympic Games and get a PR in every event.’ And Ash says, ‘Kevin Mayer is doing it'”.
Mayer, who took silver with 8,834 points, edged out Canada’s Damien Warner, who claimed bronze.
Mathias is the only other American to repeat as a gold medalist, winning in 1948 and 1952, and Britain’s Daley Thompson is the only other two-time victor, taking gold in 1980 and 1984.
Eaton finished with 8,893 points, shy of his world record of 9,045 set previous year, but good enough tie the Olympic record set by Czech Roman Sebrle in 2004.
The Americans’ duplicated Randy Barnes and John Godina, who finished first and second at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Her male counterpart, Kerron Clement, won his hurdles race during the morning session, earning a gold medal to put in a spot in his trophy case where a note now sits reserving the space for his Rio hardware.
After his third javelin throw of 196-1, “I thought, ‘OK, that is within reason to where I can push myself to what I think I would have to push myself in order to win, ‘” Eaton said.
The skiffs will round off the competition as the men and women’s 49er classes reach their climax while better winds than those which graced Rio Wednesday will be required if the 470 sailing medal races are to be concluded.
Clement won in 47.73 seconds, 0.05 ahead of Kenya’s Boniface Mucheru Tumuti, 24.
But four years ago, Clement finished last in the Olympic final.
Muhammad went out hard and held on strong to win the women’s 400 hurdles in 53.13.
“The reality of winning is better still than the dream”, Muhammad told reporters. “I’m sure when I get back to the village, I’ll thank him”. “But I don’t think he has believed it is going to happen, so now he has gone and made it so public that I definitely have got to do it”. However, the Americans won an appeal because they were bumped by a Brazilian runner causing the mishap.
“We were laughing and joking out there”, English Gardner said.
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Even though Bolt admitted to a sense of disappointment at his time, the manner of his victory – with the rest of the field effectively out of contention after 100m – was typically impressive.
