Ashleigh Johnson made nine saves, Kiley Neushul scored three goals on four shots and the United States routed Italy 12-5 on Friday for its second straight Olympic gold medal in women’s water polo.
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On Friday, however, the Americans set a standard the rest of the world will struggle to meet.
Women’s water polo is also the first team gold for the U.S.in the Rio Games. In fact, it wasn’t much of a competition at all. Johnson overcame an apparently nervous start a game after she and her teammates allowed 10 goals by the Hungarians – the most all tournament – in their semi-final win.
At least Italy put up a fight, for a while.
The U.S. rolled past Italy 12-5 Friday to cap an unbeaten stay in Brazil. The program becomes the first women’s water polo team to win back-to-back golds (or multiple golds at all) at the Olympics, the sport having been added in the year 2000.
Krikorian brushed away any talk of winning it all for him and his family, insisting Blake himself would think it was a ludicrous notion, but his players pledged their support for their grieving coach. Adam Krikorian left the team the next day to return to California, but came back to Rio on August 8 before the competition began.
Germany beats Sweden in women’s soccer • Dzsenifer Marozsan scored early in the second half and Germany went on to give coach Silvia Neid a 2-1 victory over Sweden in her final match and the nation’s first Olympic gold in women’s soccer.
With the US featuring strong and unselfish play on the offensive end of the pool, the Italians needed to score goals to keep up.
Before departing for California, Krikorian met with his players and urged them to make the most of their Olympic experience.
“What we did is really hard to do”, Steffens said.
With the victory, the defending world champion team became the first to capture back-to-back gold medals after prevailing at the 2012 London Games.
Usain Bolt seeks to say his goodbye with another gold medal Friday night at the Rio de Janeiro Games, where another Olympic juggernaut – the US men’s basketball team – faces Spain in the semifinals.
Is this the best women’s water polo team of all time? Dora Antal, Anna Illes and Keszthelyi each scored two goals. He also led the UCLA men’s team to three national titles, two with former USA national team coach Guy Baker.
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USA captain Maggie Steffens was named Most Valuable Player for the second successive Olympics after topping the overall scoring charts with 17.
