Volleyball: Team USA defeats Serbia (2024)

It is another action-packed day in Paris on the fifth day of the 2024 Olympics.

Focus was on Bercy Arena where the male gymnasts are took part in the individual all-around final and Japan's Oka Shinnosuke took the gold medal.

Over at Roland Garros: Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula crashed out of the women’s doubles but there was better news for Tommy Paul, who has reached the quarterfinals of the men’s singles.

At La Defense, Katie Ledekcy won her eighth Olympic gold medal in the 1500m freestyle before Leon Marchand made history of his own with an unprecedented pair of gold medals in the 200m fly and 200m breaststroke.

The USWNT beat Australia 2-1 in Marseille before the U.S. men's basketball team eased to a 103-86 blowout win against South Sudan.

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Survive and advance is the name of the game and the defending women’s Olympic volleyball champions the United States today squeaked past the defending world champions Serbia.

Team USA won the first two sets but a sudden shift in momentum allowed Serbia to win the next two sets.

The 5th set was a nail-biter with both teams trading points but the U.S. eventually pulled away to win 16-14.

Team USA is now 1-1 at these Games and will face France on August 4th to end pool play.

Another weather delay, this time in the archery.

The last six matches of the day have been postponed to tomorrow because of the risk of thunderstorms in Paris this evening.

There’s a big soccer clash happening in Marseille and, midway through the first half, the USWNT and Australia are level 0-0.

You can follow minute-by-minute coverage of that clash with my colleague Ed Mackey by clicking here.

It’s raining gold at the Champ-de-Mars Arena!

Croatia’s Barbara Matic has beaten Germany’s Miriam Butkereit to claim gold in the women’s 70kg event, with Gabriella Willems (Belgium) and Michaela Polleres (Austria) sharing bronze.

And in the men’s 90kg event, Georgia’s Lasha Bekauri (pictured) got the better of Japan’s Murao Sanshiro in the gold medal match. Bronze goes to Greece’s Theodoros Tselidis and home favorite Maxime-Gael Ngayap Hambou.

Danielle Collins has both taken heat and been majorly applauded for her decision to retire “on her own terms”. She’s 30 and has had a career-best run the last 6 months since she announced she’ll retire at the end of the season.

It’s hard to say whether the announcement itself released the pressure valve or if she really needed this much time to develop into a top ten WTA player (she’s currently ranked 9th). She is certainly a tour favorite although there were very loud ‘Iga’ chants throughout the match, even while Collins admirably broke her at the end of the second set to win it.

Next month, Collins will have a chance to play in front of a home crowd in her final major at the U.S. Open. If you’re an American tennis fan, I recommend bringing tissues.

Collins was unfortunately forced to retire just before the match was about to come to a natural end, as she trailed 1-4 in the final set.

Meanwhile Polish superstar Iga Swiatek moves on to the semifinal against China’s Zheng Qinwen who rallied to beat three-time major winner Angelique Kerber, who is also retiring at the end of this year. Collins’ reasoning for retirement included wanting to start a family, something Kerber accomplished last year when she gave birth to her daughter. Zheng will have her hands full in the next round as her win over Kerber lasted over three hours, which is extremely long for a three-setter.

In the men’s gymnastics all-around final, Canada’s Felix Dolci fell hard off of his first shot at horizontal bar, and left the apparatus with an apparent injury.

After everyone else finished, he returned for a redo. Midway through, Dolci fell again. He fiddled with his hand, but chalked up, regrouped, completed his set and stuck his landing.

Dolci gave the crowd a heart symbol as they roared appreciation.

A pretty cool moment.

What an Olympic Games Australia’s Jessica Fox is having. She has just won another gold!

Fresh from taking the women’s K-1 slalom crown in Vaires-sur-Marne, she has now added the C-1 gold to go with it.

She completed the course with just two penalty seconds to score a total of 101.06 — 2.48 seconds ahead of silver medallist Elena Lilik of Germany, with Evy Leifbarth of the United States claiming bronze.

Fox is building quite the collection of Olympic medals: she won silver in the K-1 at London 2012, bronze in the same event at Rio 2016 and a gold and a bronze at Tokyo 2020.

Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul made quick work of the Dutch team of Robin Haase and Jean-Julien Rojer, winning 6-3, 6-4 in one hour, 11 minutes. The Americans are headed to the quarterfinals in men’s doubles.

One more match on the docket for Fritz: mixed doubles with Coco Gauff over on Court Simonne-Mathieu. That will follow the men’s singles match between Casper Ruud and Francisco Cerundolo that just got underway on that court.

Thirteen years ago, Great British rower Lola Anderson (third right) wrote down her dream of winning a gold medal at the Olympics. Then she threw the note away.

Anderson, 26, had forgotten about it but her father, Don, never did. Don kept the paper and gave it back to Lola in 2019, months before he died of cancer, reminding Anderson of her 13-year-old self’s dream.

“My name is Lola Anderson and I think it would be my biggest dream in life to go to the Olympics and represent Team GB in rowing and, if possible, win a gold medal,” she wrote after watching the London Games in 2012, per Olympics.com.

On Wednesday morning, Anderson achieved that dream by winning a gold medal in the women’s quadruple sculls.

“I know that (my dad) would be so, so proud,” an emotional Anderson told BBC Sport after the win. “I’m thinking a lot about him right now. It’s really lovely.”

What a blow for the Brazil women’s soccer team: their talisman and captain Marta has received a red card in their game against Spain.

That means she’ll miss Brazil’s quarterfinal match should they qualify. And she departs in floods of tears.

They are level 0-0 with Spain at halftime.

In game 1 of Wednesday's 3x3 basketball slate, Australia beat Germany 21-19.

Australia is a downhill team that does most of its damage attacking the rim and getting offensive rebounds. With 4:43 left in the game, Australia had 12 total rebounds, 5 of them on offense. They continued to dominate the glass and finished the game with 18 total rebounds, 10 being offensive boards.

As for Germany, they have a revolving door of stars including Siena University star guard Elias Mevivus, who finished with six points and four rebounds.

In the end, Alex Wilson's nine points and five rebounds and Maren Whittle's nine points were too much to handle.

Australia's Svenja Brunckhorst tied it at 19 apiece with 54 seconds left, but a Wilson clutch two-point shot sent them packing.

Looking ahead, Germany will face Canada on August 1st and Australia will play Team USA on the same day.

Germany’s Angelique Kerber has just brought the curtain down on her wonderfully successful career.

Kerber announced before the Olympics that this would be the final tournament of her career. She won the first set of her quarterfinal with China’s Zheng Qinwen but tired late on and lost 6-7 (4) 6-4 7-6 (6).

Kerber won three Grand Slam titles in her career: the 2016 Australian Open, the 2016 US Open and the Wimbledon Championships in 2018.

Frederick Richard’s hopes of an all-around medal may have been dashed already.

Richard fell off the pommel horse, scoring only a 12.733.

The American had to be near perfect to get to the podium against a loaded field.

USWNT center back Tierna Davidson has been forced out of the team’s final group stage match after a knee-on-knee collision suffered in the Germany game.

While head coach Emma Hayes didn't want to yet confirm who would replace her on the game-day 18 on Tuesday as the paperwork hadn't cleared yet, it’s defender Emily Sams (Orlando Pride) who has received the nod.

It may be an obvious choice, as she's the only defender amongst the team's alternatives, but Hayes has also praised Sams' NWSL performances before.

You can follow minute-by-minute of the USWNT’s game against Australia by clicking here.

There was a gold medal at Bercy Arena for USA yesterday in the women's gymnastics team final after the men's team won bronze on Monday.

Two of the U.S. men are in action in today's all-around final — which has just got underway — as Paul Juda and Frederick Richard are both part of a very strong field.

The ultra-dominant Chinese and Japanese gymnasts are expected to be the ones taking to the podium later on, but USA have plenty of gymnastics momentum heading into today's event.

On the back of her disappointing — and controversial — singles defeat yesterday, there were hopes that Coco Gauff would be able to challenge for the medals in the women's doubles alongside Jessica Pegula for USA.

But Czech pair Karolina Muchova and Linda Noskova have eliminated them at the quarterfinal stage. The Americans won the first set 6-2 but lost the second 4-6 and were beaten 10-5 in the match tiebreak.

Gauff's final hope of a medal comes in the mixed doubles where she is in action with Taylor Fritz later on against Canada's Felix Auger-Aliassime and Gabriela Dabrowski.

Thirteen years after “JimmerMania” dominated the attention of American basketball for one captivating March Madness run, Jimmer Fredette is in the Summer Olympics as a starring member of Team USA’s 3×3 men’s team.

The BYU legend arrived in Paris via a winding international road that spanned the NBA, the D League, the Chinese Basketball Association, the Greek Basket League and The Basketball Tournament.

Despite playing all over the world, it was restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic that most prominently put Fredette on Team USA organizers’ radars. With Fredette unable to return to China, he took a call from U.S. coach Fran Fraschilla in 2022, who asked Fredette if he wanted to play 3×3.

Fredette later debuted with the national team in November 2022 and helped the team qualify for Paris.

In getting here, Fredette established himself as the team’s star and leader. He earned gold with the 3×3 team at the 2022 FIBA AmeriCup, then silver at the 2023 FIBA World Cup and another gold at the 2023 Pan American Games. Read more below...

Adriana Ruano Oliva, pictured, has just made history.

The Guatemalan, 29, has just won the first Olympic gold medal in the history of the Central American country.

Oliva, competing in the women's trap shooting final, set a new Olympic record of 45/50 shots.

Italian Silvana Maria Stanco and Australia's Penny Smith took the silver and bronze medals, respectively.

It's a pretty stellar-looking last eight in the men's singles tennis. Here's who made the quarterfinals:

• Novak Djokovic (1) vs Stefanos Tsitsipas (8)
• Alexander Zverev or Alexei Popyrin vs Lorenzo Musetti (11)
• Casper Ruud (6) or Francisco Cerundolo vs Felix Auger-Aliassime (13) or Daniil Medvedev (4)
• Tommy Paul (9) vs Carlos Alcaraz (2)