Summer Olympics 2016: Winners and Losers in Rio on Day 3
Rio was teeming with winners and losers on Day 3 of the 2016 Summer Olympics, but there was no bigger winner than Japan's men's gymnastics team.
The field was wide-open after Saturday's qualification rounds. The gap between first place (China) and fifth place (Great Britain) was fewer than 1.8 points.
Japan had the fourth-best score in qualifying, but Kohei Uchimura and his teammates were not deterred. Nor were they shaken Monday when Koji Yamamuro had a disappointing 13.9 on the pommel horse that put them in sixth place after the first of the six rotations.
They were nearly perfect the rest of the way, gradually digging themselves out of that early hole before running away with the gold by a margin of more than 2.6 points.
Read on for the rest of Monday's biggest winners and losers.
Loser: Kim Woo-jin (Men's Archery, South Korea)
1 of 10
One of the few certainties in the Summer Olympics is that South Korea will do well in archery. It has won at least four medals in archery in each of the past four summer Olympics, including three of the four possible golds in 2012.
And through the team events, things were holding to form. South Korea's men beat USA in Saturday's gold-medal match by a score of 6-0, while the women bested Russia 5-1 in Sunday's finals.
Two-time world champion Kim Woo-jin set a world record in Friday's individual ranking round with a score of 700 out of a possible 720. Coupled with his success in the team event on Saturday, the assumption was that he would cruise to an individual medal, likely the gold.
But Indonesia's Riau Ega Agatha—who tied for 31st out of 64 in the ranking round with a score of 660—had other ideas, stunning Kim with a 6-2 upset in the round of 32.
After losing the first set 29-27, Ega Agatha stormed back to win three in a row, finishing the fourth and final set with two straight 10s to win the match.
The Koreans could still win the gold. Lee Seung-yun will be in action on Tuesday, while Ku Bon-chan—Sports Illustrated's pick to win silver to Kim's gold—will have his first two matches on Wednesday. But they're no longer the heavy favorite they were at the start of the day.
Winner: Russia's Female Fencers
2 of 10
Three of the 36 women who competed in sabre fencing hailed from Russia, and they went undefeated against the rest of the world.
Sofya Velikaya, Yana Egorian and Ekaterina Dyachenko each won their first two matches, taking down sabreuses from Poland, France, USA, South Korea, Greece and Mexico along the way. The one big upset from that bunch was Dyachenko defeating USA's projected medalist, Mariel Zagunis, in the round of 16.
Once in the quarterfinals, they finally started bumping into each other.
Egorian outdueled Dyachenko 15-10 before comfortably taking out Ukraine's Olga Kharlan 15-9 to advance to the gold-medal match. At that point, Egorian ran into gold-medal favorite Velikaya, who won consecutive matches over challengers from France in Cecilia Berder and Manon Brunet.
In a thrilling final, Egorian came back from an early 7-3 deficit to tie the score at 8-8. The Russians were also tied at 12, 13 and 14 before Egorian scored the final point to win gold and hand Velikaya the silver.
Loser: China's 10M Air Rifle Men's Duo
3 of 10
The shooting events—particularly the 10-meter air rifle for both genders—have been wildly unpredictable in Rio.
On the women's side of things on Saturday, Sports Illustrated's projected gold medalist (China's Yi Siling) just barely qualified for the finals before taking bronze. The projected silver (Serbia's Andrea Arsovic) and bronze (Petra Zublasing) medalists weren't nearly as fortunate, both failing to finish in the top 25 in the qualifying round from which only the top eight advanced to the finals.
Monday was no different for the men, with all three projected medalists not even advancing out of the qualifying round. And with Yang Haoran and Cao Yifei expected to win gold and silver in the event, that spelled disaster for China.
Cao only just missed the cut in ninth place, but Yang was nowhere close, as the gold medalist from the 2014 World Championships in Grenada came in 31st out of 50.
Monday was supposed to be a big medal day for China, and the 10-meter air rifle should have jump-started that quest. Instead, it was Italy's Niccolo Campriani, Ukraine's Serhiy Kulish and Russia's Vladimir Maslennikov who took gold, silver and bronze, respectively.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Winner: China's 10M Platform Synchronized Diving
4 of 10
Shooting a target 10 meters away didn't work out so well for China, but flipping and twirling 10 meters into a pool with a teammate was a different story, as Chen Aisen and Lin Yue obliterated the field in synchronized diving, as expected.
No matter the tandem, China has owned men's synchronized diving for the past 12 years.
In 2004, Tian Liang and Yang Jinghui won gold by a margin of more than 12 points. In both 2008 (Lin and Huo Liang) and 2012 (Cao Yuan and Zhang Yanquan), the Chinese won by a margin of slightly less than 18 points.
This year made those blowout wins look like nailbiters.
With a score of 496.98, Chen and Lin finished 39.87 points ahead of USA's silver-medal duo of Steele Johnson and David Boudia. In five of the six dives, China had the highest score and beat the second-best team by at least three full points.
Based on the size of their lead after the first five dives, Chen and Lin could have simultaneously belly-flopped into the pool on the final dive and still won gold.
Loser: Serbia's 4th Quarters
5 of 10
Serbia's men and women were simultaneously in action in basketball Monday afternoon. At 1:15 p.m. ET, the men tipped off against Australia and the women began their game against Canada.
For the next 90 minutes, things were looking good.
The men trailed by three after one quarter, but they bounced back to take a halftime lead before closing out the third quarter up by one. The women were in even better shape, turning an eight-point halftime lead into a 12-point advantage by the start of the fourth quarter.
It went downhill in a hurry from there.
Australia's Patty Mills scored 13 of his game-high 26 points in the fourth quarter as the Aussies outscored Serbia's men 33-17 in the final period. And Canada's women held the Serbian women's team scoreless for the first four minutes and 54 seconds of the fourth quarter in the process of getting outscored 26-10 and losing by four.
Serbia's women face Team USA on Wednesday, while the men draw Kevin Durant and Co. on Friday.
At least they won't blow fourth-quarter leads in those games.
Winner: Kohei Uchimura
6 of 10
Japan's Kohei Uchimura has been hailed as the greatest male gymnast in history, and he did not disappoint with his routines in the team event.
Uchimura is the seven-time reigning gold medalist in the all-around, winning at the 2009-11 and 2013-15 World Championships, with a 2012 Olympic gold in between. There's not a weakness in his arsenal, as he scored at least a 14.8 on each of the six apparatuses and a 15.1 or better on five of them for an overall score of 91.6.
It wasn't quite the 92.69 that he posted in 2012, nor the 92.332 that he registered in the 2015 World Championships, but it would have been good enough to beat every other score in each of those years.
Because of his dominant performance, Japan easily won team gold after finishing runner-up to China in both 2008 and 2012. Russia earned silver while China took bronze on Monday.
The Japanese were also buoyed by Ryohei Kato. He only competed on five of the six apparatuses, but he posted a 14.933 or better on each one. In fact, Japan got a 14.8 or better in 17 of its 18 routines for a nearly flawless day in the gym.
Loser: Ukraine's High-Bar Options
7 of 10
Ukraine was never likely to medal in the men's team gymnastics final. China, Japan, USA and Russia were the favorites, with Great Britain as the sleeper and Brazil the long shot that might ride home-field advantage to a surprising spot on the podium.
But no one expected Ukraine to forfeit several of its 18 routines.
Following disappointing performances by two of his teammates on the high bar, Ukraine's Maksym Semiankiv waved his hand to the judges, walked up to the bar, jumped up to touch it, bowed his head and left.
"That was strange," said Jonathan Horton on NBC's broadcast. "They pretty much just threw up the white flag and said, 'We're done.'"
"Wow!" Horton continued as the shock of the moment continued to sink in. "I mean, could they not have found someone else to put in to do a high-bar routine? I have never seen that in a team final."
Semiankiv proceeded to post a DNS on the parallel bars, floor exercise and rings. He might have sustained an injury and didn't want to risk worsening it once it was apparent Ukraine wouldn't win a medal, but Horton makes a valid point. Each country has five gymnasts with only three competing on each apparatus. Why couldn't one of the two subs on those legs at least attempt to get a few points?
Winner: USA's 100M Backstroke Streak
8 of 10
By winning gold and bronze for Team USA in the men's 100m backstroke, Ryan Murphy and David Plummer joined a list of swimmers longer than the rest of the world's list combined.
USA has now won gold in this event in 15 of the last 23 Summer Olympics. Add in the 14 silver medals and eight bronze medals in those Games and USA has 37 of the 70 total medals awarded (52.9 percent) in the men's 100-meter backstroke dating back to 1912.
Murphy's gold also extends USA's streak to six in a row, while Plummer's bronze means USA also has a streak of three Olympics with at least two medals in the event.
Murphy set a new Olympic record with his time of 51.97 seconds, finishing just 0.03 seconds behind the world record that USA's Aaron Peirsol set in 2009.
Loser: Great Britain's Women's Rugby Sevens
9 of 10
Great Britain was dominant for the first two days of women's rugby sevens. In reaching Monday's semifinals, it went 4-0 with a cumulative score of 117-10. Only eventual gold medalist Australia had a wider scoring margin through the first two days, outscoring its opposition 125-12.
The train came flying off the tracks on the final day, though, as the previously impenetrable defense turned into a sieve.
In the 25-7 semifinal loss to New Zealand, Great Britain gave up five tries, thanks in part to two yellow cards.
Redemption should have been on the table in the bronze-medal match against Canada—a team they had beaten 22-0 the previous day. Instead, Great Britain was fed a heaping pile of revenge, as the Canadians also had five tries en route to a 33-10 blowout.
In total, Great Britain allowed as many tries Monday as it allowed points in the first two days combined.
Winner: Lilly King
10 of 10
For the most part, the conversation about USA swimming has revolved around Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky—the former attempting to improve upon his already-ridiculous 23 lifetime Olympic medals while the latter takes the world by storm with her freestyle dominance.
But Lilly King temporarily turned all of the attention to the women's 100-meter breaststroke with her interview after Sunday night's semifinal.
Russia's Yulia Efimova was at the center of the controversy, originally banned from the Olympics after her second doping scandal. But the ban was overturned by the International Olympic Committee on Saturday, making her eligible for the event.
After Efimova won her semifinal Sunday night, she wagged her index finger No. 1, to which King did not take kindly.
"You're shaking your finger No 1, and you've been caught for drug cheating," King said to NBC's Michele Tafoya after winning her semifinal 0.01 seconds faster than Efimova's time.
Over the next 24 hours, that bad blood morphed into the biggest USA vs. Russia battle in sports since Rocky Balbao vs. Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
After talking the talk, King swam the swim, setting an Olympic record in winning gold and beating Efimova by a margin of 0.57 seconds.
"We can still compete clean and do well at the Olympic Games," King told Tafoya after the race.
Better yet for Team USA, Katie Meili won bronze in that event, giving the Americans six of the 13 medals awarded for swimming on the night.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
