Ali watched Bowie, her suitemate in Rio and the rest of the team as they won four gold, six silver and six bronze medals.
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Favourite Rollins, who owned the fastest personal best in the field, ran an nearly flawless race from lane six to add Olympic gold to her 2013 world title by a couple of paces in 12.48 seconds.
Olympic hurdler Kristi Castlin, whose father was shot dead when she was a child, has spoken out about gun violence after winning bronze. It was just the seventh time that one country has swept the medals in a single event, and the first-ever for the United States women. China had already won gold in the men’s singles and both the women’s singles and team tournaments.
“It’s like a sisterhood, Kristi and I train together and tonight we prayed together to give us the confidence we need to get us through these rounds and come out here and fulfil our dreams”.
The U.S. men’s basketball team dominated Argentina 105-78 to secure a spot in the semifinal round later this week.
Nia Ali, who earned the silver, had overcome a year away from track to give birth to and care for her 15-month-old son, Titus. “I see mothers struggle to get their body back”, said Ali.
Halfway home in the decathlon, and reigning Olympic and world champion Ashton Eaton of the U.S.is in the lead.
“We were ready to go”, Castlin said. The map does not include foreign-born medalists who competed for Team U.S.A.
“The whole Olympics had gone by and you’d seen Katie Ledecky doing great things and Simone Biles”.
“We are gonna have a great time, probably go out”, she said.
“I’m just so grateful we were able to accomplish this together”. “We came into it as a team for girl power in the U.S.”.
Castlin had earlier celebrated the unique United States triumph with Ali and Rollins, close friends in what she described as a “black girl magic movement”.
‘Losing my father at the age of 12 to gun violence – I’ve overcome so much.
In 2009, Ali’s father, Aleem, a supervisor in the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, walked up to a auto and shot his ex-girlfriend to death, then killed himself.
‘I feel, when I was young, I definitely had a lot of good guidance but sometimes I didn’t have someone of my age that I really could talk to’.
‘I want to connect more with young people that have been victims of gun violence. Harrison said after her world-record race that she was happy to come back “with a vengeance”, if she couldn’t be at the Olympics.
“I honestly didn’t think that far ahead”, Ali said when asked if she envisioned medaling a year ago.
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The long jump competition produced more surprise as the US went 1-2 with prodigious leaps of 23-feet 5 inches by Tianna Bartoletta, and 23-feet 4 inches by Brittney Reese, earning the athletes gold and silver medals.
