The highest spot on the medal tally on the Tokyo Olympics got here down to at least one gold, the USA edging China 39 to 38 on the final day of the Video games. If one thought that the tussle for bragging rights between the 2 sporting superpowers couldn’t get any tighter, they had been improper.
Within the French capital, it got here all the way down to the final medal occasion, and the final shot. The USA tied with China on 40 gold by successful the ladies’s basketball occasion in a remaining that itself was determined by a single level on the final second. However by advantage of getting extra medals of the opposite two hues, the Individuals acquired their noses in entrance, solely simply.
At one level, on the penultimate day of the Olympics, China had a lead of 4 on the medal tally, earlier than the USA acquired shut after a memorable night time of athletics motion, together with successful the 2 4×400 relays.
Going into Sunday, they trailed China by one, which turned two when Li Wenwen received the ladies’s +81kg weightlifting gold. When the Individuals misplaced the ladies’s volleyball remaining to Italy and Kennedy Alexis Blades went all the way down to Japan’s Yuka Kagami within the ladies’s 76kg wrestling finale, it appeared as if they might fall quick and China would end on high for the primary time because it hosted the Video games in Beijing in 2008.
However Jennifer Valente introduced a gold within the ladies’s omnium biking occasion, setting the stage for the USA’s ladies hoopsters to get the job executed, barely.
Trying on the larger image, they introduced medals in as many as 34 sports activities, with 14 of them fetching gold. Athletics contributed 14 of them and swimming eight, regardless of being pushed all the best way by Australia and France. There have been some sudden contributions as properly, Olivia Reeves’s gold in ladies’s 71kg weightlifting was USA’s first in a number of a long time.
The American male wrestlers drew a clean so far as gold is anxious, whereas their ladies took house two.
China benefited enormously from their complete dominance of desk tennis and diving and, to a lesser diploma, weightlifting. Additionally they took 5 gold medals from taking pictures and three from boxing, although they needed to be happy with simply two from their badminton squad. A complete of 23 sports activities fetched them medals, with 14 bringing gold, together with their first in ladies’s singles tennis for Zheng Qinwen.
It was additionally Olympics for Japan (20 gold medals), Australia (18) and hosts France (16) as they completed within the high 5 of the medal desk.