Olympic Live Updates: U.S. Men Face France for Gold in Basketball

Saturday is a huge day at the Olympics, probably the biggest of the Games. How’s this for a lineup?

The U.S. men’s basketball team goes for the gold medal against France, the team it lost to earlier in the competition, at 11:30 a.m. Tokyo time, 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Friday.

In baseball, the United States will try to earn only its second gold in the sport when it faces Japan, the only team it has lost to in this Olympics, at 6 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.

The track docket includes both 4×400-meter relays, always a highlight, plus the men’s 1,500 meters (the metric mile) and the women’s 10,000 meters and high jump. Those events all begin in the Tokyo evening, U.S. morning.

The women’s marathon is underway in Japan.

The U.S. women’s water polo team faces off against Spain for gold.

Women’s golf finishes, with Nelly Korda of the United States in the mix for a gold medal. Team events in artistic swimming and rhythmic gymnastics begin in the Tokyo afternoon and evening.

TOKYO — On the track Friday night, Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas powered away from the field in the 400 meters, while Allyson Felix, in third place, won a record 10th Olympic medal.

In the men’s 4×100 relay, Italy ran down Britain in the last stride to win. In the women’s race, the Jamaican team, with all three medalists from the 100 meters, outran the U.S. for the gold.

In the women’s 1,500, Faith Kipyegon of Kenya foiled Sifan Hassan’s bid for a 1,500-5,000-10,000 triple; Hassan finished third. Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda won a physical men’s 5,000 with the American Paul Chelimo in third.

Alix Klineman and April Ross of the United States won the gold medal in beach volleyball, giving Ross a full set of medals in the event.

The U.S. women’s volleyball and basketball teams both rolled past Serbia in semifinal matches. Final volleyball score: 3-0. Final basketball score: 79-59.

Gable Steveson of the U.S. won the heaviest weight class in freestyle wrestling, upending Geno Petriashvili of Georgia with a takedown with only seconds to go.

Canada defeated Sweden in a shootout for its first gold in women’s soccer.

TOKYO — With nine Olympic medals (six golds and three silvers), Felix was already tied with the Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey as the most decorated female Olympian in track and field.

By winning her 10th Olympic medal in the 400-meter final, she has matched Carl Lewis as the most decorated American athlete in track and field. She also has 18 world championship medals, including 13 golds.

Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas won the 400-meter race with a time of 48.36, and Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic came in second.

Felix finished with the bronze medal, running her second fastest time ever, in 49.46. The time is faster than her silver medal performance at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

For Felix, this Olympic berth — her fifth — meant something more than medals, though. Her daughter, Camryn, was born in 2018 after an emergency cesarean session at 32 weeks. She remained in the neonatal intensive care unit for weeks.

Felix’s first exercise after Camryn’s birth was a 30-minute walk.

In 2019, Felix penned an opinion piece in The New York Times criticizing the maternity policies of her longtime sponsor, Nike, who declined to guarantee that she would not be punished if she didn’t perform at her highest levels in the months after giving birth.

She came to these Games as an athlete sponsored by Athleta. And weeks before the Tokyo Games, she started her own shoe brand, Saysh.

Felix won the bronze medal wearing her own shoes on her own terms, with her family cheering from home.

She will have a chance of earning yet another Olympic medal in the 4×400 meter relay on Saturday.

When Bethany Shriever secured the gold medal in the women’s BMX racing final, it was in an event in which she was not even projected to be a finalist. The win last week was Britain’s first Olympic gold in the event.

But it wasn’t just that Shriever, who was racing against the two-time defending Olympic champion Mariana Pajon of Colombia, was an unlikely contender to make the final, let alone claim gold. It’s that without some help from a GoFundMe page she set up in 2017, Shriever might not have even made it to Tokyo.

“The chances would be very, very, slim,” she said.

Shriever, 22, grew up participating in the British Cycling program, honing her skills in a sport where she was often the only girl at the track — something she took note of almost instantly, she said.

“I would just be training with boys pretty much,” she said. The number of competitors participating in boys’ races, particularly as she joined bigger events, always greatly outnumbered those in the girls’ races.

Shriever’s breakout moment came when she captured the junior world title at the 2017 UCI BMX World Championships in Rock Hill, S. C. But within months, Shriever was questioning her future in BMX. In a budget review after the 2016 Rio Games, UK Sport, the government body that invests in Olympic and Paralympic sports in Britain, cut funding to the women’s BMX program and announced it would finance only the men’s program in its journey to Tokyo.

“It was questioning things like, ‘Why haven’t we got the same chances as the men?’” Shriever recalled feeling at the time. “I wanted to get to the top and be able to earn a living from doing this.”

So Shriever decided to stay home in Essex with her family and take a second job as a teaching assistant helping children. She worked three days a week, and headed straight to the track or the gym afterward. “There were nights when I couldn’t put everything into training because I was just so knackered from work,” she said, adding that her employer was flexible with her schedule, giving her half days or allowing her time off for competitions. Her parents ferried her to races.

As the Olympic cycle began in 2019, Shriever knew that to earn enough points to get to Tokyo, she needed a better solution. She calculated what it might cost to hire a coach and to compete in various races before setting up a GoFundMe page for 50,000 pounds, or just about $70,000. She managed to raise nearly 20,000 pounds, which she said was used up almost immediately because of two events in Australia.

“That decision opened a lot of eyes that I did need help and I did have the potential to compete in the Games,” she said about launching a GoFundMe.

By midsummer 2019, Shriever had rejoined the British Cycling program. She did so with the help of a coach from British Cycling and a push by the program to get UK Sport to reinvest in disciplines whose budgets had been cut.

Shriever won all three of her heats in Tokyo and then the final, screaming on her bike as she crossed the finish line. In two weeks, Shriever will be competing for another first-place finish at the 2021 UCI BMX World Championships in Papendal, Holland.

Shriever is still the only woman on her six-member racing team, which includes Kye Whyte, who won the silver medal in the men’s event and was cheering from the sidelines as she made history. In addition to Shriever’s and Whyte’s medals, Charlotte Worthington won gold in the BMX women’s freestyle, an event that made its debut in Tokyo.

Women have come a long way in BMX, Shriever said, with more getting involved despite the obstacles they have to overcome to get the same opportunities as men. There is still work to do, she said, but she feels hopeful about the future.

“We are going in the right direction, for sure,” Shriever said.

All times are in Eastern.

TRACK AND FIELD The women’s marathon will air at 8 p.m. on NBC. Fans can also catch the women’s 400-meter final, which concluded with Allyson Felix taking the bronze, her 10th Olympic medal. Event coverage also includes the men’s and women’s 4×100-meter relay finals, the women’s 1,500-meter final and the men’s 5,000-meter final.

DIVING The men’s 10-meter platform semifinal will air at 8:30 p.m., and the final at 2 a.m., on NBC.

CANOE/KAYAK Catch the semifinals in the men’s and women’s kayak four 500-meter events, followed by the men’s canoe single 1,000-meter and women’s canoe double 500-meter from the Sea Forest Waterway. Heats kick off at 8:30 p.m. on USA Network, and all conclude with the finals starting at 10:30 p.m.

BASKETBALL At 10:30 p.m., Kevin Durant and the U.S. men’s team will play France for the gold medal. The game will air live on NBC.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL The undefeated duo April Ross and Alix Klineman won their first Olympic gold in this match against Australia, which is re-airing at 10:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Network.

SOCCER Canada’s women’s soccer team grabs its first Olympic gold in a final with Sweden; a replay of the match airs at 11:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Network.

BASEBALL In another medal matchup, South Korea takes on the Dominican Republic for the bronze medal. The game begins at 11 p.m. on CNBC. (The U.S. and Japan face off in a gold medal game airing at 6 a.m. on NBC Sports Network.)

Another 29 people connected to the Games tested positive for the coronavirus, Tokyo 2020 organizers reported on Friday, as Japan reached the milestone of one million coronavirus cases.

At least 387 people with Olympic credentials have tested positive in Tokyo since July 1, including 32 athletes, according to organizers. Most of the infections have occurred among Japanese nationals, including contractors and others working at Olympic venues.

While a tightly controlled bubble has kept the virus from derailing the Games, infections are spiraling across Japan. Health officials reported 5,042 new cases in Tokyo and 14,211 nationwide on Thursday, both daily records.