Summer Olympics

Allyson Felix qualified for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Felix placed second in the women's 400-meter dash final Sunday at the U.S. Olympic Trials at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, finished with a time of 50.02 seconds.

She appeared to be slowing down around the final turn before surging down Lane 8 to move up the field.

Felix qualified for the final after logging a time of 51.01 seconds in the semifinals, the second-best in her heat and sixth-fastest overall.

She entered the trials looking to compete in her fifth Summer Olympics, an incredible feat for any athlete and even more so for a sprinter. The 35-year-old is also one medal behind Carl Lewis for the most all-time by an American track and field athlete.

Ahead of this weekend's event, Felix told USA Today's Emily Adams she had another source of motivation powering her quest to Tokyo: her daughter Camryn, who was born in November 2018.

"My daughter has totally been that driving force,” she said. “I've always been this competitive person. I've always had a drive and a desire to win, but I think now, being a mom, it's really about teaching her how to overcome adversity and showing her what hard work looks like."

This isn't the end of Felix's involvement in the Olympic team trials. She's also planning to run in the 200-meter dash, which is scheduled for Thursday at 9:31 p.m. ET.

No matter the outcome, her place in Tokyo is now assured.

Legendary Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt and his girlfriend, Kasi Bennett, announced the birth of twin babies Sunday.

Bolt took to Instagram to share a photo of his family and divulged in the caption that the newest additions are named Saint Leo Bolt and Thunder Bolt.

The 34-year-old native of Jamaica and Bennett had their first child together, daughter Olympia Lightning Bolt, last year.

Bolt is perhaps the greatest sprinter of all time, winning gold in both the 100-meter and 200-meter dash at three consecutive Olympic Games in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

He also won gold as part of Team Jamaica in the 4x100-meter relay at the 2012 London Olympics and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Bolt holds the world record in all three of the aforementioned events, and he is the only sprinter to win gold in the 100- and 200-meter races at three Olympics in a row.

In addition to his Olympic success, Bolt won 11 gold medals, two silver medals and one bronze medal during his career at the World Athletics Championships.

After sweeping his three events at the 2016 Olympics, Bolt took part in the 2017 World Championships, winning bronze in the 100-meter dash at his final meet.

Since retiring from track, Bolt has been active in several other endeavors, including playing soccer for the Central Coast Mariners of the Australian A-League in 2018 and doing some work as a musician and music producer.

Utah Jazz guard Joe Ingles will play for the Australian men's basketball team at the 2021 Summer Olympics.

Ingles has been a fixture for Team Australia since 2008. His breakout on the international stage came at the 2009 FIBA Oceania Championship, scoring 19.5 points per game to help lead Australia to a silver medal. His stellar effort in the 2012 Summer Olympics helped pave the way for him joining the Jazz in 2014.

Australia has won the 2011 and 2013 Oceania Championships while adding the 2009 silver with Ingles on the squad.

The program has been in the midst of an ascent in recent seasons, finishing fourth at the 2016 Olympics and 2019 World Cup. 

Ingles will be a critical part of the country's hopes to land its first Olympic medal.

Several NBA players have opted to not play in the 2021 Summer Games due to the NBA's condensed schedule this season and shortened offseason this summer. However, this is likely Ingles' last shot at an Olympic medal, so it's little surprise he wants to be on the floor. 

After earning a spot on the United States Olympic track and field team Saturday, Sha'Carri Richardson went public with the news that her mother recently died.

According to ESPN's D'Arcy Maine, Richardson said the following after winning the women's 100-meter dash at the Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon: "My family has kept me grounded. This year has been crazy for me. Going from just last week, losing my biological mother, and I'm still here."

Richardson, 21, starred collegiately at LSU and is set to make her Olympic debut in Tokyo this summer.

On the heels of posting a time of 10.86 seconds in the 100-meter dash, Richardson expanded upon the loss she experienced in her personal life:

"I'm still here. Last week, finding out my biological mother passed away and still choosing to pursue my dreams, still coming out here, still here to make the family that I do still have on this earth proud. And the fact [is] nobody knows what I go through. Everybody has struggles and I understand that, but y'all see me on this track and y'all see the poker face I put on, but nobody but them and my coach know what I go through on a day-to-day basis.

"I'm highly grateful for them. Without them, there would be no me. Without my grandmother, there would be no Sha'Carri Richardson. My family is my everything, my everything until the day I'm done."

Richardson, who was the 2019 NCAA champion in the 100 meters and second-place finisher in the 200 meters, will look to break up the dominance of Jamaican runners in those events at the Tokyo Games.

While she has already qualified for the 100-meter dash, she will attempt to qualify for the 200 as well Thursday after posting the best qualifying time in the field at 22.11 seconds.

Per Maine, Richardson has the second-fastest 100-meter dash time of the year so far at 10.72 seconds, behind only the time of 10.63 seconds posted by Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

Fraser-Pryce won gold in the 100-meter dash at both the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. She won bronze in 2016, while Jamaican teammate Elaine Thompson won gold.

Richardson will look to become the first American to win Olympic gold in the 100 meters since Gail Devers in 1996.

Thompson also won gold in the 200 meters at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, but if Richardson is able to unseat her, she will become just the second American woman to win gold in the 200 since 1992, joining 2012 gold medalist Allyson Felix.

Katie Ledecky had one test left at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, this week with the 800-meter freestyle.

Of course, she easily aced this one, too.

In Ledecky's signature event, the 800-meter, the 24-year-old cruised to an easy win, finishing in 8:14.62—nearly six seconds faster than the second-place finisher and just 10 seconds off the world record.

Katie Grimes, 15, took second place at 8:20.36—immediately earning the praise of Ledecky before even getting out of the pool.

The Washington D.C. native is now the fifth woman to swim four individual events at the Olympics, joining Shirley Babashoff, Summer Sanders, Katie Hoff and Missy Franklin, per Bill Mallon of Olympedia.org (h/t NBC Sports' Nick Zaccardi). Ledecky entered Saturday having already won the 400 freestyle, 200 freestyle and 1500 freestyle in Omaha. She's also joining the 4x200 free relay team in Tokyo.

A win in each event would make her the first American woman to win five golds in a single Olympics.

Watching Ledecky swim remained as thrilling as ever Saturday as the veteran of two Olympics Games surged ahead of the field after just two laps, pulling away until she was the only swimmer who could fit in the TV broadcast frame as the race for second place became the only question remaining.

Ledecky already owns five Olympic gold medals. She could end up matching that total in a few weeks after her performance in Omaha.

Ryan Lochte's quest to make the United States team for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo is over.

The 36-year-old finished seventh with a time of 1:59.67 in the men's 200-meter individual medley on Friday at the U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha, Nebraska. A top-two finish was required for him to punch a ticket to Tokyo, and it quickly became apparent that wouldn't be on the cards.

Michael Andrew (1:55.44) and Chase Kalisz (1:56.97) led the way.

During his post-race interview, Lochte hinted at his continued involvement in competitive races, though this was probably his last crack at the Olympics given his age.

He qualified for Friday's final after finishing with the sixth-best time (1:58.65) during the semifinal heats.

That left him as a bit of an outsider to make the Team USA roster. The Washington Post's Dave Sheinin noted how he hadn't enjoyed a sub-1:57 200-meter individual medley since 2016. It turned out that's exactly what was required to guarantee a second-place outcome.

Competing in a fifth Summer Olympics would've been a monumental achievement, but Lochte's legacy is already cemented. He's a six-time Olympic gold medalist and has collected 12 medals in the pool.

Michael Phelps casts quite a shadow for his peers, but Lochte will unquestionably be remembered as one of the best American swimmers of his generation.

United States distance runner Shelby Houlihan has received a four-year ban from competition for failing a drug test.

In a statement on Instagram, Houlihan said her positive sample from a December drug test for the anabolic steroid nandrolone was due to pork in a burrito that she ate:

I have since learned that it has long been understood by WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] that eating pork can lead to a false positive for nandrolone, since certain types of pigs produce it naturally in high amounts. Pig organ meat [offal] has the highest levels of nandrolone. In the following 5 days after being notified, I put together a food log of everything that I consumed the week of that December 15th test. We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burrito purchased and consumed approximately 10 hours before that drug test from an authentic Mexican food truck that serves pig offal near my house in Beaverton, Oregon. I notified the AIU [Athletics Integrity Unit] that I believed this was the source.

Houlihan noted her levels "were consistent with those of subjects in studies who were tested 10 hours after eating this source" and accused the World Anti-Doping Agency of not following technical guidelines by ignoring the possibility the finding could've come from pork consumption.

"WADA agreed that test proved that there was no build up of this substance in my body, which there would have been if I were taking it regularly," Houlihan wrote.

The 2016 Olympian said the Court of Arbitration for Sport denied her appeal June 11, leading to her ban from the sport for the next four years. 

Houlihan, 28, competed in the women's 5,000 meters at the 2016 Olympics. She placed 11th in the final in Rio de Janeiro. The Iowa native won the women's 5,000 meters and 1,500 meters at the 2019 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya didn't qualify for the 5,000 meters at the Tokyo Olympics. 

Per BBC.com, Semenya finished Friday's qualifying race in 15 minutes, 32.15 seconds. The time limit for Olympic qualifying is 15 minutes, 10 seconds. 

The BBC noted this was Semenya's second attempt to qualify for the 2020 Games. She posted a time of 15:52.28 at an event last month. 

Semenya is the reigning two-time Olympic champion in the women's 800 meters. She won the 2016 gold with a time of 1:55.28, more than one second ahead of silver medal winner Francine Niyonsaba (1:56.49). 

Ever since her breakthrough at the 2009 World Championships, Semenya has been the subject of intense scrutiny and testing by World Athletics (the group formerly known as IAAF). 

Semenya, who has elevated levels of testosterone stemming from her hyperandrogenism, was made to undergo a sexual verification test in 2009.

The 30-year-old is currently embroiled in a legal fight with World Athletics over the organization's rule, adopted in 2018, that prevents her from running in the 400 meters, 800 meters and one-mile race without medically lowering her testosterone levels. 

The International Olympic Committee has set a June 29 qualifying deadline for athletes in most sports. 

Athletes who compete in the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo will be required to sign a waiver assuming all COVID-19 risks prior to participating.

Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports obtained a copy of the waiver and relayed an excerpt Friday:

"I agree that I participate in the Games at my own risk and own responsibility, including any impact on my participation to and/or performance in the Games, serious bodily injury or even death raised by the potential exposure to health hazards such the transmission of COVID-19 and other infectious disease or extreme heat conditions while attending the Games."

As Bushnell noted, participants have signed similar waivers in the past, but this version includes verbiage to protect the International Olympic Committee and Olympic organizers in regards to COVID-19.

In a virtual forum Thursday, IOC President Anthony Bach acknowledged the waiver "is a concern for a number of you [athletes]."

Bushnell also reported athlete representatives had zero say on the waiver and don't have "bargaining power" to fight the waiver or input on "COVID-19 countermeasures" to help ward off the disease in Tokyo.

Japan's major cities are under their third state of emergency, per NPR's Anthony Kuhn, and the country just extended that through June 20. The Olympic Games are scheduled to begin July 21 with softball and soccer competitions.

Kuhn explained the COVID-19-related concerns in Japan:

"The spread in Japan of variant strains of the virus has slowed the decline in case numbers. Some hospitals remain overstretched by COVID-19 patients, and some people have died at home without being able to access medical care.

"Japan's vaccine rollout remains the slowest among developed economies with just 6% of residents having received at least one dose. Partially because Japan had relatively few COVID-19 cases compared to other countries last year, it entered into vaccine purchasing agreements with foreign vaccine-makers months later than experts say it should have."

In addition, the Japan Times reported that over 80 percent of Japanese citizens do not want the Games to be held as scheduled.

However, IOC vice president John Coates last week said the Games will go on even if there is a state of emergency during the July 21-Aug. 8 Olympics.

Stephen Wade and Yuri Kageyama of the Associated Press provided remarks from Coates last Friday:

"The advice we have from the WHO [World Health Organization] and all other scientific and medical advice that we have is that—all the measures we have outlined, all of those measures that we are undertaking are satisfactory and will ensure a safe and secure games in terms of health. And that's the case whether there is a state of emergency or not."

The opening ceremony is slated for July 23. The Tokyo Games were already postponed one year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Olivia Smoliga won her first Olympic gold medal in 2016 as part of the 4x100-meter relay team, but she's far from satisfied.

The 24-year-old will enter the 2021 Summer Games as a contender to earn her first individual medal. As part of her preparations for what lies ahead, Smoliga made an appearance on the B/R app for a live Q&A session Tuesday. 

The following is the full transcript from the AMA session.

@dad Do you remember your first swim lesson?

Yes I do. I was at just this public pool swim park situation and I remember trying to lift my head up, blow bubbles out with my hand in front. In the same time I was swimming I was learning how to do diving. Eventually stuck with swimming.

Definite learning curve. When I started swimming I didn’t really like it because I kept getting ear infections. When I watched the 2004 Olympics it attracted me to the sport so much

@ma3thew20 At what point did you realize you were a really good swimmer, capable of going up against the best?

It grows every day. But I went to my first Olympic trials to compete in 2012, I was 17 and they take top 2 in Olympic trials in each event. After the semifinals, I was third going into finals. I was like, I’m in it… so crazy.. I was one spot away from making the Olympic team. I ended up getting fourth overall in that final and that was cool… It’s an everyday thing to really believe in your capabilities.

@fitchkarma66 What motivates you to swim?

Seeing how I can push myself, how far I can push myself every day. Not only in a meet but in training then putting it all together and mentally gassing yourself up every day… how far can you stretch your mind and body. You train all these years for less than a minute of competition, so it’s pretty crazy but I love it.

@Antonio16rossi What’s bigger for you: the thrill of winning or fear of losing?

Thrill of winning definitely. You have to really try your hardest to take out the fear of anything when you try to accomplish what you set out to do. 

@DekeGeek Is there any feeling like winning a gold medal?

Totally different feelings that you feel in your life. That is apart of your life that I appreciate so much It’s really incomparable because of all the great feelings I have felt. It’s a great feeling. It’s one part of my life that I’m grateful for.

@striplingwarrior Do you ever talk to other athletes on the podium and what do you say to them if so? 

Yeah we do. At that point the race is over and when you're able to be on the podium, the national anthem of your country plays when you win, but the other two flags also rise up. It’s great representation for all three parties. Swimmers are the best. You get to know not only people from USA, but from other countries as you travel more. We’ll joke around about what we’ll see in the stands, bur all of my competitors are super cool. We chat all the time.

@just_in_time Do you have any memorable stories or experiences with other pro athletes that you ran into during the Olympics?

I’ve been starstruck a couple of times. In 2016, team USA shares the same building with all USA athletes. We’re with the gymnasts… I’m 6’2’, and we're walking from the dining hall into the building and coming out of the building is the Fab Five -- Simone Biles, you got all your girls. The presence they held was just power. They walked in a pack and it was so sick to see. They had so much power and they just walked past me. During Michael Phelps’ 200 Fly, we were in the stands cheering and the NBA guys came to watch. I was pretty starstruck because all these guys were just chilling, watching, cheering on.

@Dana_Grey What does your diet look like on training days?

Nothing specifically, when I’m hungry, I eat. I make sure I’m full for practice. You have to make sure you’re fueled all the time. We really eat a lot. 

@BR_NHL What does an average training day look like for you? How many hours do you spend in the pool? 

Doubles days it’s 3.5 hours. On singles days it’s 2. So average 2.5 daily.

@SMXC What goes through your head before a big event?

At that point I feel like I’m pretty zoned in. You have practice meets throughout the year. You just get to train your mind to be primed in the moment when you’re about to race. It’s pretty standard. You ride over in a bus, have your music on, get to the team area, put on your racing suit. It really is affirmation after affirmation. You’re ready to go after that point. You live off the atmosphere around you, get ready and just go.

@jacksonhuff How do you overcome adversity after a rough championship meet?

It’s tough. I will think back to even in 2012, missing the Olympic team at the time was heartbreaking. The following year I missed the national team, then the following year I got silver. So many ups and down throughout the sport and finally you get a little bit of light after going through those failures. Failures can be taken in stride if you choose to learn from them. You're only gonna be where you want to be if you change what you’re doing at the time. It’s an everyday thing and it’s a delayed gratification especially for Olympic athletes because we work those 3+ years for one moment. We do have major competitions yearly, but something to learn from all the time. If you keep pushing, you’ll see the light. It’s not always gonna be good. At this point in my career you’re always going to want better and find ways to get better and better yourself, better yourself through the sport. It’s a learning thing I think.

@belacsmoon What race has been most important to you and why?

There’s like a handful that they have this thing that it’s kind of unexplainable. It’s so natural. Your mind, your soul, your body is aligned in the moment. It’s so great because at that point your self belief is the highest, your motivation is the highest. Nothing else is on your mind and I feel like when an athlete is able to embody that all the time, that’s like the skill, so I hold onto those and continue to build off of that feeling. But equally important are the missed steps as well. 

@zlehrbaum What was your favorite unique experience during the pandemic if any?

When I’m able to spend time with my family at home in Illinois. It’s a very grounding experience when you’re able to be home. I was able to spend time with my brother… we jogged, lifted together. I did less swimming in the volume so was able to lift a lot heavier. This is what’s cool to me… I was able to max out my weight, surpassing what I had done in season and to gain that strength and and use it as a base when pools starting opening back up again, but spending time with my family has been the best. 

@allrise99 What advice do you have for high school swimmers?

I would say one of the biggest things that I’ve learned is to eliminate as many distractions as possible with self discipline. It’s tough in high school, so much stimulation is in your mind, but I think if youre really able to focus on the goal and what you know you have to do. It’s not the easy way to say no to things.. Prioritizing yourself above all so you can achieve what you want to achieve. Being disciplined might be the lame thing, but in the end its the main thing.

Rapid Fire:

Your favorite aquatic animal

turtle

Favorite movie 

Soul, Mr. & Mrs. Smith

The next place you want to travel

Tokyo

Favorite holiday

Xmas

The first Disney movie that comes to your mind is _____

Aladdin, Jungle Book, Soul

The piece of advice you would give your younger self

Keep going. It’s all going to work out. Keep working hard and keep believing in yourself