Page 14 - Florida Sentinel 8-23-16 Online Edition

Sports
U. S. Men Win Third Straight Hoops Gold With Romp Over Serbia
The United States men's basketball team poses with gold medals.
USA Beat Spain For Sixth Straight Women's Basketball Gold
The trip wasn't always easy, though they arrived at their expected destination.
The players on the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team never doubted they would be standing on the gold-medal platform, even after some close calls in Rio and criticisms that they lacked the usual big names and big- ger wins.
"I know there was kind of a lot of buzz around us not playing well a couple of games, two, three games in the early round," Carmelo Anthony said, "but the way that we locked in and the way that we focused in to be able to have this gold medal around our necks was special."
Saving their best for last in a tournament that had been tough, the Americans con- vincingly won their third straight gold medal, beating Serbia 96-66 on Sunday.
"We came here, and de-
spite what people are saying about this group, being less talented and not blowing teams out, we did a good job of bottling all that up and un- leashed it on Serbia," forward Paul George said.
Kevin Durant scored 30 points in the final game with the national team for coach Mike Krzyzewski, who took the Americans back to the top and leaves with them there after becoming the first coach to win three Olympic gold medals.
"To go home as gold medalists and leave Coach K off with another gold was one of our main goals as well," Durant said.
Anthony also picked up his third gold to go with a bronze, becoming the most decorated male in Olympic basketball history. He an- nounced his retirement from international competition after the game.
coach Geno Auriemma in tears.
Victory brought a fourth consecutive Olympic gold for
Taurasi, captain Sue Bird, and Tamika Catchings.
Earlier,Serbiawonbronze by beating France 70-63.
Diana Taurasi and Lindsay Whalen scored 17 points apiece for USA, gold medallists for the eighth time in 10 appearances.
Victory extended USA's Olympic winning streak to 49, dating back to the bronze- medal match at Barcelona 1992.
Spain's silver was their first Olympic medal of any colour in women's basketball.
The world's third-ranked team had lost 103-63 to the United States in the group stage.
Spain's Alba Torrens scored a game-high 18 points, but USA were com- fortable winners, leaving
USA won their sixth successive Olympic women's basket- ball title, beating Spain 101-72 at Carioca Arena.
Ellen's Usain
U. S. Women's Team Wins Sixth Straight Gold In 4x400-Meter Relay
Bolt Tweet
Deemed Racist
Allyson Felix an- chored the U. S. women to gold in the 4x400-meter relay final Sat- urday, giving the Americans the gold in the event for the sixth straight O l y m p i c Games.
Natasha Hastings, Phyllis Francis, Allyson FelixandCourtneyOkolo.
A Tearful Shakur Stevenson
What was meant as a joke about Usain Bolt and Ellen DeGeneres swiftly went awry on Twitter.
On Monday, the daytime talk show host's official Twit- ter account tweeted a doc- tored image of Ellen riding the back of the gold medalist.
The photo is the now fa- mous one of him smiling as he heads to winning the men's 100m race at the Olympics in Rio.
The tweet's caption from Ellen reads "This is how I'm running errands from now
on."Some on Twitter found the image less than golden, with cries of racism and insensitiv- ity in joking about a white woman riding the back of a black man.
The U. S. team of Courtney Okolo, Natasha Hastings, Phyllis Francis and Felix led the entire race and fin- ished in 3 minutes, 19.06 sec- onds. Jamaica took silver in 3:20.34, and Great Britain got the bronze in 3:25.88.
Felix, who also won gold in the 4x100 relay and silver in the 400 meters, now has six
career gold medals, extending her record for most golds by a female track athlete.
Her nine medals overall tie her with Jamaica's Merlene Ottey for the most among all women in track and field. Only Carl Lewis, with 10, has more overall medals among American track ath- letes.
Loses Bantamweight Final,
Settles For Silver
Ryan Lochte, Fellow Swimmers Will Face Discipline, USOC CEO Says
In a playful moment at the Athletes’ Village just two days earlier, Shakur Stevenson was serenaded by his close-as- sister best friend, Claressa Shields, the unofficial cap- tain of the U. S. Olympic box- ing team.
“Just the two of us, build- ing gold medals in the sky!” Shields sang as she danced around the room, revamping the lyrics of the Bill Withers 1980s R&B classic, while Stevenson swayed and laughed in a chair nearby. “Just the two of us, bye and bye!”
They came to Rio bearing the gold medal hopes of USA Boxing — Stevenson, 19, a first-time Olympian who started the tournament here with a 23-0 record in interna- tional competition, and Shields, 21, the mid- dleweight who had extended
SHAKUR STEVENSON
her record to 74-1 since her gold medal triumph at the 2012 London Games.
And Saturday, when the referee of the gold medal men’s bantamweight bout at Riocentro Pavilion 6 an- nounced a split decision in favor of Cuba’s Robeisy Ramirez, the teenager who had wanted nothing more than to deliver Olympic gold to his family, his home town of Newark and his country, buried his head in his red USA boxing shirt as the tears fell.
U. S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun says further action is coming in the matter of 12-time swim- ming medalist Ryan Lochte and his three U. S. team- mates, whose story of a rob- bery overshadowed the Rio de Janeiro Games.
Blackmun offered no details on what disciplinary action may be coming, but he made no effort to hide his frustration with the matter.
"They let down our ath- letes," Blackmun said. "They let down Americans.
"And they really let down our hosts in Rio who did such a wonderful job, and we feel very badly about that. I think we ended up in the right place in terms of being able to shine a light on what really
RYAN LOCHTE
happened there.''
Lochte originally de-
scribed the Aug. 14 incident as an armed robbery, before the story unraveled.
In an interview with NBC that aired Saturday, Lochte backtracked and said he "overexaggerated" the story.
"That's why I'm taking full responsibility for it, because I overexaggerated the story," Lochte said. "If I had never done that, we wouldn't be in this mess.
PAGE 14 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2016