Canada won its fifth swimming medal on Day 8, with Kylie Masse taking silver in the women’s 200-metre backstroke to add to her silver in the 100m back earlier this week. That makes 12 medals overall for the Canadian team in Tokyo — three gold, four silver, five bronze. All by women. See the full medal standings and a detailed breakdown of Canada’s hardware here.
A mouth-watering Day 9 is coming up as the last night of swimming competition leads into track and field’s marquee event: the men’s 100 metres. Canada’s two biggest Summer Olympic stars, Penny Oleksiak and Andre De Grasse, can add to their already-impressive medal collections.
Our daily Olympic viewing guide will focus on them. Plus, strong Canadian medal chances in diving and gymnastics, a key women’s basketball game, and crunch time in beach volleyball and men’s golf. Here’s what to watch on this super Saturday night/Sunday morning:
De Grasse has real shot to become World’s Fastest Man
The title is truly up for grabs at the Olympics for the first time since Usain Bolt blew away the field (and blew our minds) with his then world-record 9.69 in 2008 in Beijing. The GOAT added two more 100m gold medals before retiring in 2017. Christian Coleman then emerged as the clear favourite to take the first Olympic gold of the post-Bolt era when he won the world title in 2019, but the young American got himself suspended for Tokyo by missing several doping tests.
Since then, track fans have debated who might fill the vacuum in Tokyo. 2016 Olympic silver medallist Justin Gatlin seemed like a natural choice. He beat Bolt in his farewell race at the 2017 worlds, then took silver behind Coleman in 2019. But the 39-year-old finally ran out of gas at the U.S. Olympic trials, blowing a tire in the final and failing to qualify.
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As Tokyo approached, opinion coalesced around 26-year-old American Trayvon Bromell as the consensus favourite. He posted the two fastest times of the year in June — a 9.77 and a 9.80 that won him the U.S. trials final. Bromell also won the final Diamond League 100m race before the Olympics — on July 13 in England. De Grasse finished fourth there but was clearly saving something for a 4×100 relay race an hour later.
The Canadian was also fourth in an Olympic-calibre 100m field at the Diamond League meet in Monaco four days earlier. The top-five betting favourites for Tokyo (at the time) all lined up, and American Ronnie Baker won it in 9.91. South Africa’s Akani Simbine placed second in 9.98, and Italy’s Marcell Jacobs rounded out the podium in 9.99. De Grasse ran a 10 flat, while Bromell stumbled early and finished one spot behind him in 10.01. De Grasse arrived in Tokyo this week having run under 10 seconds with a legal wind just once this year — and that was back in April.
But here’s something we need to remember about De Grasse: He saves his best for the biggest stages. In his career, the 26-year-old has started five individual events at the Olympics or world championships. He’s reached the podium in every single one — bronze in the 100m at the 2016 Olympics and the 2015 and 2019 world championships, silver in the 200 at the ’16 Olympics and ’19 worlds. Big Race ‘Dre, indeed.
Now it looks like De Grasse is peaking at the right time once again. He placed first overall in the opening-round heats on Saturday with a personal season-best time of 9.91. Bromell, meanwhile, did not look like an Olympic favourite. The top three in each heat automatically advance, and he finished fourth in his — scraping into the semifinals as one of the three wild cards. Suddenly, this event looks even more wide open than we thought.
The semifinals begin Sunday at 6:15 a.m. ET, and De Grasse is running in the first of the three heats. The top two in each advance, plus the next two fastest runners. Assuming all goes well, De Grasse will try to become the first Canadian since Donovan Bailey in 1996 to win Olympic 100m gold when the final goes Sunday at 8:50 a.m. ET. Watch it live on the CBC TV network or stream it live on CBC Gem, the CBC Olympics app and CBC Sports’ Tokyo 2020 website. Read Bailey’s takes on De Grasse, Bromell and the rest of the men’s 100m contenders here. Watch a CBC Sports Explains video on the history (and possible future) of the race here.
One other Canadian is competing in a track and field final on Day 9: Django Lovett in the men’s high jump, which starts at 6:10 a.m. ET. He’s not expected to win a medal.
The top event in this morning’s finals was the women’s 100 metres. Elaine Thompson-Herah repeated as champion and led a Jamaican sweep of the podium with an Olympic-record 10.61. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, a gold medallist in 2008 and 2012, took silver at age 34, while Shericka Jackson got the bronze. Read more about the race and watch it here.
Penny Oleksiak may finish the night as the most decorated Canadian in Olympic history. (Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s Oleksiak’s last chance to break Canadian Olympic medal record (for now)
The 21-year-old star heads into the final night of swimming competition with two medals in Tokyo and six in her career. That’s tied with speed skater Cindy Klassen and speed skater/cyclist Clara Hughes for the most ever by a Canadian Olympian.
Oleksiak has an excellent chance to get the record all to herself in the women’s 4×100-metre medley final tonight at 10:15 p.m. ET. In this race, each swimmer performs a different stroke. And Canada happens to have an Olympic medallist in almost all of them. There’s 100m butterfly champion Maggie Mac Neil, 100m and 200m backstroke silver medallist Kylie Masse and, of course, Penny. She won gold in the 100 freestyle in 2016, took bronze in the 200 free a few days ago and also swam a blistering anchor leg in the 4×100 freestyle relay to win silver for Canada last weekend. The other member of the team is no slouch, either. Sydney Pickrem took bronze in the 200 breaststroke at the 2019 world championships. This lineup won bronze in the 4×100 medley at that meet.
Canada also qualified for the men’s 4×100 medley final at 10:36 p.m. ET — the very last swimming race of the Games. But the team would need a miracle to medal.
Watch the final five swimming medal races starting at 9:30 p.m. ET on the CBC TV network, or stream them live on CBC Gem, the CBC Olympics app and CBC Sports’ Tokyo 2020 website.
Other Canadian medal chances on Saturday night/Sunday morning
There are two strong ones. In chronological order:
Diving
Jennifer Abel is a podium threat in the women’s 3m springboard final at 2 a.m. ET. The 29-year-old placed fourth in this event at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She was also fourth at the most recent world championships, in 2019, and took bronze at the worlds in 2017 and 2011.
Abel has never won an individual medal at the Olympics, but she took silver in the 3m synchronized with Mélissa Citrini-Beaulieu last week and bronze in that event in 2012 with former partner Émilie Heymans.
Gymnastics
Simone Biles announced yesterday she won’t defend her Olympic title in the vault or compete in the uneven bars final on Sunday. The American superstar is still dealing with a mental block known in gymnastics as “the twisties” — a loss of orientation while performing moves in the air. It’s this sport’s version of “the yips,” which you might recognize from golf or the new season of Ted Lasso — except way more dangerous. The yips may cause you to miss a putt or a penalty kick, but the twisties can result in a catastrophic injury. They forced Biles to walk away from the team final and decline to defend her individual all-around title earlier this week. She’s still hoping to compete in the floor exercise and balance beam finals on Monday and Tuesday.
Biles’s absence from the vault final, which goes at 4:52 a.m. ET, gives Canada’s Shallon Olsen a better chance at the podium. She took silver in this event at the 2018 world championships and finished fourth in 2019.
Some other interesting stuff you should know about
The Canadian women’s basketball team can make its path easier. After losing their opener to Serbia and rebounding with a win over South Korea, the fourth-ranked Canadians play their final group-stage game at 9 p.m. ET vs. Spain (2-0). Barring a blowout loss and an unfavourable result in one of the other groups, Canada will likely advance to the quarter-finals. But winning their group would be big because it means avoiding the unbeatable U.S. team until at least the semis. Read more about the scenarios and a full preview of tonight’s game vs. Spain here.
It’s crunch time in beach volleyball. The group stage is over. It’s all single-elimination from here on out. Both the women’s and men’s rounds of 16 open tonight, and Canada has two women’s teams alive. Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson, who are ranked 16th in the world, play at 8 p.m. ET vs. No. 3-ranked Americans Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil. Canada’s top duo, reigning world champions Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes, play tomorrow night. They breezed through their three group-stage games without losing a set.
A dramatic final round is shaping up in men’s golf. With 18 holes to go, world No. 5 Xander Schauffele of the United States holds a one-shot lead over Hideki Matsuyama. They were the final pairing at this year’s Masters, where Matsuyama became the first Japanese player to win a men’s golf major, and Schauffele let a chance to grab his first major title slip as he tied for third. They’ll once again play together in the last grouping, along with Great Britain’s Paul Casey, who’s two shots behind Schauffele. Matsuyama is already a national hero for winning the green jacket, and a gold-medal victory on home turf would elevate him to another level in Japanese sports lore. Four-time major winner Rory McIlroy, who’s representing Ireland here, is also in the hunt — tied for fifth and only three shots off the lead. Canadians Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes are tied for 17th — seven shots off the lead and five behind the current bronze-medal position. The final round starts at 6:30 p.m. ET. Hughes tees off at 8:47 p.m. ET, Conners at 9:03 p.m. ET, and the final group at 10:09 p.m. ET.
How to watch live events
They’re being broadcast on TV on CBC, TSN and Sportsnet. Or choose exactly what you want to watch by live streaming on CBC Gem, the CBC Olympics app and CBC Sports’ Tokyo 2020 website. Check out the full streaming schedule here.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
