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Tokyo Olympics Gold-Getters

July 26, 2021
The GIST: It’s Day 4 of the Olympics, and a 13-year-old — Japanese skateboarder Momiji Nishiya — has already won a gold medal. Feeling old yet?
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Tokyo Olympics Gold-Getters Tokyo Olympics Gold-Getters
Source: TSN/Twitter

Team USA: While Team USA was absent from the podium on opening day for the first time since 1972, they more than made up for it on Sunday. Swimmer Chase Kalisz won the first U.S. medal of the Games and his first career Olympic gold in the 400m individual medley.

  • Other notable firsts include fencer Lee Kiefer winning the first-ever U.S. gold medal in individual foil (women’s or men’s, NBD) while 18-year-old Anastasija Zolotic became the first American woman to win taekwondo gold. Talk about golden hour.

🏅Other medal winners: The theme of the weekend was dark horse. Though Dutch medal favorite Annemiek van Vleuten thought she’d won gold when she finished the women’s road cycling race yesterday, the actual winner — teamless, coachless, unsigned, unknown Austrian Anna Kiesenhofer — had crossed the finish line first a shocking minute and 15 seconds earlier.

  • And in Saturday’s men’s 400m freestyle, 18-year-old Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui won the gold despite qualifying eighth of eight and starting from the outside lane. His family’s reaction is why we love a good underdog story.
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