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Games go on post-Phelps
Search begins for new head-liner
BEIJING (AP) - Welcome to the rest of the Beijing Olympics - the Summer Games of 2008, A.P.
After Phelps.
The games continued Monday in search of a new headliner now that Michael Phelps has toweled off for the last time. The Bird's Nest seemed the likeliest place for someone to emerge and, indeed, the big news of the day came from the track.
However, it wasn't good news. It was the sad sight of Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang limping to the starting blocks, trying to race through injuries and quickly finding out he couldn't.
To understand how big a deal this is, you have to understand how big a deal he is.
Liu is China's first-ever male gold medalist in track, having won the 110 meters in Athens. Folks have spent the last four years expecting him to do it again on home turf, and in this land of 1.3 billion people, he's as much of a celebrity - not just sports star, full-fledged celebrity - as their main man, Yao Ming.
That's why people inside the stadium cried. Why folks watching at subway stations gasped. Why his personal coach was too overcome with grief to speak at a news conference.
The Olympics, however, still went on Monday, without Liu or Phelps. At least there's still Usain Bolt and his bid to become the first winner of the 100- and 200-meter races since Carl Lewis in 1984.
Bolt was second in his opening-round heat of the 200 in the morning, then easily won his quarterfinal heat at night, jogging down the stretch and still topping the reigning champ Shawn Crawford of the United States by several strides.
Other notable events included another rout by the U.S. men's basketball and softball teams and a bad break, in more ways than one, for U.S. cyclists.
On Tuesday, Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor advanced to the finals in women's beach volleyball, giving them a chance to defend the title they won four years ago. The win was their 107th straight and it came in straight sets over a Brazilian duo. Who they'll play in the finals was still being determined, but either way it'll be a tandem from China.
TRACK AND FIELD: The U.S. flag finally rose at the Bird's Nest, and it came from an unexpected source when Stephanie Brown Trafton won the women's discus. It went up again later when Angelo Taylor won the 400-meter hurdles, with Americans Kerron Clement and Bershawn Jackson taking silver and bronze.
After capturing only one of six possible medals in the men's and women's 100, watching the 1,500-meter team of Bernard Lagat, Lopez Lomong and Leo Manzano all fail to advance past the semifinals, and seeing Terrence Trammell get hurt in the opening heat of the 110 hurdles, Brown Trafton's victory was a much-needed lift. The 400 sweep was awfully nice, too, something no country had done since the U.S. in 1960.
Also, Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva won her second consecutive gold in women's pole vault, topping American rival Jenn Stuczynski and then upping her own world record to 16 feet, 6 3/4 inches; Brimin Kipruto made it seven straight Olympics that Kenyans have won the men's 3,000-meter steeplechase; and 18-year-old Pamela Jelimo led a 1-2 Kenya finish in the women's 800.
Despite the pain of a lingering hamstring problem and the added bother of a tendon flare-up in his right foot, national pride carried Liu to the start line.
He took off at the gun, took three strides and then began hopping on his left leg, the good one. Someone else false-started, so he could have tried again, but there was no way. He peeled the lane-assignment number off each leg and headed for a tunnel.
“He couldn't imagine the pain he was suffering,” said China's track and field coach, Feng Shuyong. “Let me repeat: Liu Xiang will not withdraw unless the pain is unbearable.”
So the guy who croons in a music video, appears in TV commercials and looms on billboards will no longer have his gold-medal defense play out daily Monday through Thursday.
MEN'S BASKETBALL: The “Redeem Team” keeps powering through the Olympics, crushing Dirk Nowitzki and Germany 106-57. Next up: A quarterfinals game against Australia, which gave the U.S. team its only close competition thus far in an exhibition game two weeks ago. The winner goes to the semifinals against the Argentina-Greece winner.
“We feel like we're playing very well right now, but you have to keep in mind it's single elimination,” Kobe Bryant said. “You can't afford any slip-ups.”
China secured a spot in the medal round despite losing 91-77 to Greece. Yao Ming and his pals will next play Lithuania, while Spain will face Croatia, the winners of those games meeting in the other semifinal.
BASEBALL: The U.S. team beat China 9-1 in a game that featured rough play such as a home-plate collision that knocked out China's top player, a retaliatory hit batsman and three ejections.
Also, American second baseman Jayson Nix - still recovering from a foul ball off his left eye that resulted in surgery, stitches, bruises and fuzzy vision - said he hopes to still return to Olympic play.
“If the doctors say he can go, he says he can go and (manager Davey Johnson) says he can go, he can go,” said Paul Seiler, USA Baseball's executive director. “Time will tell, but he's not a guy you write off.”
South Korea remained unbeaten with a wild 9-8 victory over Taiwan and Japan beat Canada 1-0.
SOFTBALL: Feel free to move on to the next section if the details of the latest U.S. rout bore you.
It was a nine-run first inning against the hostesses on the way to a 9-0 win over China, leaving the Americans two wins from another gold medal. Their win streak is up to 23; two more and they get another gold before their sport goes off the docket until at least 2016.
Up next is Japan, already a 7-0 loser to the U.S., although their ace was saved for the rematch.
Canada lost to Japan 6-0, but advanced to a semifinal game against Australia.
DIVING: Guess the nationality of the men's 3-meter springboard leader coming out of prelims? China, of course.
He Chong is on top, with two Americans chasing. Chris Colwill finished seventh and Troy Dumais was 12th, getting them into a semifinal Tuesday morning. The final is Tuesday night.
BEACH VOLLEYBALL: There won't be an all-American men's final.
Although top-ranked duo Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser rolled into the semifinals with a win over a German team, Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal lost to the defending Olympic champions from Brazil.
Next up for Rogers and Dalhausser is surprising Georgia on Wednesday.
WOMEN'S SOCCER: Get ready for a rematch. Just like 2004, the final will pit the United States and Brazil.
The Americans advanced by beating Japan 4-2. Brazil got there with a 4-1 victory over Germany.
CYCLING: The U.S. appears headed toward a second straight Olympics without any medals from the velodrome. American Sarah Hammer appears headed toward a layoff after breaking her left collarbone in a fall during the women's points race. Jennie Reed also lost in the sprint quarterfinals.
Britain continued to dominate, knocking nearly 2 seconds off the world record it set a day earlier to win the men's team pursuit. The medal gave Britain 12 golds for the Olympics so far, already its best showing since 1920. It also was its fifth gold medal in track cycling in Beijing.
World champion Marianne Vos of the Netherlands won the women's points race.
BOXING: Mauritius is a tiny island nation 560 miles off the eastern coast of Madagascar. That's worth knowing because it has produced a bantamweight medalist, although Bruno Julie isn't done fighting.
Julie beat Venezuela's Hector Manzanilla in the quarterfinals, securing no worse than bronze. Ukrainian featherweight Vasyl Lomachenko also clinched a medal with his third virtuoso performance of the Olympics, pounding China's Li Yang.
Super heavyweight Zhang Zhilei knocked down Kazakhstan's Ruslan Myrsatayev twice in a 12-2 victory that assured China of at least two boxing medals in Beijing after winning just one in its previous history.
Moldova bantamweight Veaceslav Gojan clinched his nation's second boxing medal with an upset victory over India's Akhil Kumar.
Cuba secured its fourth medal with bantamweight Yankiel Leon's victory over Worapoj Petchkoom of Thailand, but Azerbaijan's Shahin Imranov upset young Cuban featherweight Idel Torriente, just the second of Cuba's 10 fighters to lose in Beijing.
MEN'S VOLLEYBALL: The U.S. squad wrapped up pool play a perfect 5-0, beating winless Japan in three sets. This was their second game with coach Hugh McCutcheon back on the sideline. He missed the first three matches after his in-laws were attacked at a tourist spot in Beijing.
The Americans are off to the quarterfinals Wednesday against Serbia.
MEN'S WATER POLO: The U.S. beat Germany and won its preliminary group, earning an automatic berth in the semifinals. The Americans are guaranteed of finishing at least fourth, which would match their best since 1988.
“It's a great feeling,” captain Tony Azevedo said. “We're definitely the underdog story.”
The Americans will face the Serbia-Spain winner Friday. There was chatter that the Serbs lost a game to get into an easier bracket - the one the Americans are in.
“If Serbia gets that far, we'll be ready for them,” U.S. coach Terry Schroeder said.
WOMEN'S FIELD HOCKEY: No goals. No more Olympics for the U.S. women, who were eliminated after a scoreless draw with Britain. The Americans went 1-1-3, remaining without a medal since 1984. This was their first Olympics since 1996, when they got in automatically as the host nation.
EQUESTRIAN: The U.S. won team jumping, making it two Olympic titles in a row.
BEIJING (AP) - Welcome to the rest of the Beijing Olympics - the Summer Games of 2008, A.P.
After Phelps.
The games continued Monday in search of a new headliner now that Michael Phelps has toweled off for the last time. The Bird's Nest seemed the likeliest place for someone to emerge and, indeed, the big news of the day came from the track.
However, it wasn't good news. It was the sad sight of Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang limping to the starting blocks, trying to race through injuries and quickly finding out he couldn't.
To understand how big a deal this is, you have to understand how big a deal he is.
Liu is China's first-ever male gold medalist in track, having won the 110 meters in Athens. Folks have spent the last four years expecting him to do it again on home turf, and in this land of 1.3 billion people, he's as much of a celebrity - not just sports star, full-fledged celebrity - as their main man, Yao Ming.
That's why people inside the stadium cried. Why folks watching at subway stations gasped. Why his personal coach was too overcome with grief to speak at a news conference.
The Olympics, however, still went on Monday, without Liu or Phelps. At least there's still Usain Bolt and his bid to become the first winner of the 100- and 200-meter races since Carl Lewis in 1984.
Bolt was second in his opening-round heat of the 200 in the morning, then easily won his quarterfinal heat at night, jogging down the stretch and still topping the reigning champ Shawn Crawford of the United States by several strides.
Other notable events included another rout by the U.S. men's basketball and softball teams and a bad break, in more ways than one, for U.S. cyclists.
On Tuesday, Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor advanced to the finals in women's beach volleyball, giving them a chance to defend the title they won four years ago. The win was their 107th straight and it came in straight sets over a Brazilian duo. Who they'll play in the finals was still being determined, but either way it'll be a tandem from China.
TRACK AND FIELD: The U.S. flag finally rose at the Bird's Nest, and it came from an unexpected source when Stephanie Brown Trafton won the women's discus. It went up again later when Angelo Taylor won the 400-meter hurdles, with Americans Kerron Clement and Bershawn Jackson taking silver and bronze.
After capturing only one of six possible medals in the men's and women's 100, watching the 1,500-meter team of Bernard Lagat, Lopez Lomong and Leo Manzano all fail to advance past the semifinals, and seeing Terrence Trammell get hurt in the opening heat of the 110 hurdles, Brown Trafton's victory was a much-needed lift. The 400 sweep was awfully nice, too, something no country had done since the U.S. in 1960.
Also, Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva won her second consecutive gold in women's pole vault, topping American rival Jenn Stuczynski and then upping her own world record to 16 feet, 6 3/4 inches; Brimin Kipruto made it seven straight Olympics that Kenyans have won the men's 3,000-meter steeplechase; and 18-year-old Pamela Jelimo led a 1-2 Kenya finish in the women's 800.
Despite the pain of a lingering hamstring problem and the added bother of a tendon flare-up in his right foot, national pride carried Liu to the start line.
He took off at the gun, took three strides and then began hopping on his left leg, the good one. Someone else false-started, so he could have tried again, but there was no way. He peeled the lane-assignment number off each leg and headed for a tunnel.
“He couldn't imagine the pain he was suffering,” said China's track and field coach, Feng Shuyong. “Let me repeat: Liu Xiang will not withdraw unless the pain is unbearable.”
So the guy who croons in a music video, appears in TV commercials and looms on billboards will no longer have his gold-medal defense play out daily Monday through Thursday.
MEN'S BASKETBALL: The “Redeem Team” keeps powering through the Olympics, crushing Dirk Nowitzki and Germany 106-57. Next up: A quarterfinals game against Australia, which gave the U.S. team its only close competition thus far in an exhibition game two weeks ago. The winner goes to the semifinals against the Argentina-Greece winner.
“We feel like we're playing very well right now, but you have to keep in mind it's single elimination,” Kobe Bryant said. “You can't afford any slip-ups.”
China secured a spot in the medal round despite losing 91-77 to Greece. Yao Ming and his pals will next play Lithuania, while Spain will face Croatia, the winners of those games meeting in the other semifinal.
BASEBALL: The U.S. team beat China 9-1 in a game that featured rough play such as a home-plate collision that knocked out China's top player, a retaliatory hit batsman and three ejections.
Also, American second baseman Jayson Nix - still recovering from a foul ball off his left eye that resulted in surgery, stitches, bruises and fuzzy vision - said he hopes to still return to Olympic play.
“If the doctors say he can go, he says he can go and (manager Davey Johnson) says he can go, he can go,” said Paul Seiler, USA Baseball's executive director. “Time will tell, but he's not a guy you write off.”
South Korea remained unbeaten with a wild 9-8 victory over Taiwan and Japan beat Canada 1-0.
SOFTBALL: Feel free to move on to the next section if the details of the latest U.S. rout bore you.
It was a nine-run first inning against the hostesses on the way to a 9-0 win over China, leaving the Americans two wins from another gold medal. Their win streak is up to 23; two more and they get another gold before their sport goes off the docket until at least 2016.
Up next is Japan, already a 7-0 loser to the U.S., although their ace was saved for the rematch.
Canada lost to Japan 6-0, but advanced to a semifinal game against Australia.
DIVING: Guess the nationality of the men's 3-meter springboard leader coming out of prelims? China, of course.
He Chong is on top, with two Americans chasing. Chris Colwill finished seventh and Troy Dumais was 12th, getting them into a semifinal Tuesday morning. The final is Tuesday night.
BEACH VOLLEYBALL: There won't be an all-American men's final.
Although top-ranked duo Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser rolled into the semifinals with a win over a German team, Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal lost to the defending Olympic champions from Brazil.
Next up for Rogers and Dalhausser is surprising Georgia on Wednesday.
WOMEN'S SOCCER: Get ready for a rematch. Just like 2004, the final will pit the United States and Brazil.
The Americans advanced by beating Japan 4-2. Brazil got there with a 4-1 victory over Germany.
CYCLING: The U.S. appears headed toward a second straight Olympics without any medals from the velodrome. American Sarah Hammer appears headed toward a layoff after breaking her left collarbone in a fall during the women's points race. Jennie Reed also lost in the sprint quarterfinals.
Britain continued to dominate, knocking nearly 2 seconds off the world record it set a day earlier to win the men's team pursuit. The medal gave Britain 12 golds for the Olympics so far, already its best showing since 1920. It also was its fifth gold medal in track cycling in Beijing.
World champion Marianne Vos of the Netherlands won the women's points race.
BOXING: Mauritius is a tiny island nation 560 miles off the eastern coast of Madagascar. That's worth knowing because it has produced a bantamweight medalist, although Bruno Julie isn't done fighting.
Julie beat Venezuela's Hector Manzanilla in the quarterfinals, securing no worse than bronze. Ukrainian featherweight Vasyl Lomachenko also clinched a medal with his third virtuoso performance of the Olympics, pounding China's Li Yang.
Super heavyweight Zhang Zhilei knocked down Kazakhstan's Ruslan Myrsatayev twice in a 12-2 victory that assured China of at least two boxing medals in Beijing after winning just one in its previous history.
Moldova bantamweight Veaceslav Gojan clinched his nation's second boxing medal with an upset victory over India's Akhil Kumar.
Cuba secured its fourth medal with bantamweight Yankiel Leon's victory over Worapoj Petchkoom of Thailand, but Azerbaijan's Shahin Imranov upset young Cuban featherweight Idel Torriente, just the second of Cuba's 10 fighters to lose in Beijing.
MEN'S VOLLEYBALL: The U.S. squad wrapped up pool play a perfect 5-0, beating winless Japan in three sets. This was their second game with coach Hugh McCutcheon back on the sideline. He missed the first three matches after his in-laws were attacked at a tourist spot in Beijing.
The Americans are off to the quarterfinals Wednesday against Serbia.
MEN'S WATER POLO: The U.S. beat Germany and won its preliminary group, earning an automatic berth in the semifinals. The Americans are guaranteed of finishing at least fourth, which would match their best since 1988.
“It's a great feeling,” captain Tony Azevedo said. “We're definitely the underdog story.”
The Americans will face the Serbia-Spain winner Friday. There was chatter that the Serbs lost a game to get into an easier bracket - the one the Americans are in.
“If Serbia gets that far, we'll be ready for them,” U.S. coach Terry Schroeder said.
WOMEN'S FIELD HOCKEY: No goals. No more Olympics for the U.S. women, who were eliminated after a scoreless draw with Britain. The Americans went 1-1-3, remaining without a medal since 1984. This was their first Olympics since 1996, when they got in automatically as the host nation.
EQUESTRIAN: The U.S. won team jumping, making it two Olympic titles in a row.
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| U.S. gymnast Johnson finally strikes gold | Embattled nations' athletes savor Olympics |
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