RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The Latest on the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (all times local):
8:45 p.m.
The U.S. men’s basketball team powered into the semifinals of the Olympics, beating Argentina 105-78 on Wednesday night.
The Americans turned a slow start into an early ending with a 27-2 run in the first half.
They will meet Spain on Friday in a rematch of the last two gold-medal games. Spain beat France 92-67 earlier Wednesday.
Kevin Durant scored 27 points for the Americans.
Luis Scola scored 15 points and Manu Ginobili had 14 for Argentina in what’s expected to the final time the remaining core members of its Golden Generation play together.
Ginobili was taken out in the last few minutes of the game and saluted by the fans, then embraced by each of his teammates on the bench. After the teams headed to their locker rooms, Ginobili returned and was presented the game ball by an Olympic official.
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7:55 p.m.
Japan has swept the gold medals on the first day of the Olympic women’s wrestling tournament in Rio.
Sara Dosho rallied to beat fourth-ranked Natalia Vorobeva of Russia in the 69 kilograms on a takedown with 30 seconds to go in the last match of the day.
Dosho’s teammates Icho and Eri Tosaka claimed titles earlier Wednesday, with Icho winning a wrestling-record fourth gold medal.
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7:15 p.m.
Alex Danson scored two goals as Britain defeated New Zealand 3-0 in the women’s field hockey semifinals.
Wednesday’s win means Britain will advance to the final for the first time.
Britain, which placed third in 1992 and 2012, will play the Netherlands for the gold on Friday. The Dutch defeated Germany in a shootout earlier in the day after a 1-1 draw in regulation. The Netherlands seeks a record third consecutive gold medal.
Britain had plenty of scoring opportunities early and finally cashed in when Danson scored on a penalty corner with 8:48 remaining in the second period. New Zealand possessed the ball more in the second quarter but couldn’t break through, and Britain maintained its 1-0 lead at the break.
In the fourth period, New Zealand’s Kayla Whitelock was issued a yellow card after contact inside the circle, and Britain was awarded a penalty stroke. Helen Richardson-Walsh converted to make the score 2-0. Danson scored on a penalty stroke four minutes later.
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7:15 p.m.
Swimmer Maya DiRado won’t be joining the work force as soon as she had planned after her Olympic success.
The American who medaled in all four of her events in Rio was planning to retire from the sport and start a new job as a business analyst in Atlanta next month. Instead, DiRado’s representative said Wednesday that she won’t join McKinsey & Company until January.
DiRado won the 200-meter backstroke, upsetting triple gold medalist Katinka Hosszu of Hungary. She also earned gold in the 4×200 freestyle relay, silver in the 400 individual medley and bronze in the 200 IM in her first Olympics.
DiRado is set to make the media rounds in New York next Monday and Tuesday.
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6:45 p.m.
MEDAL ALERT: Japan’s Kaori Icho has become the first wrestler in Olympic history to win four gold medals.
Icho scored a takedown with less than five seconds left to beat Russia’s Valeriia Koblova Zholobova 3-2 in 58-kilogram women’s freestyle.
Icho also is the first woman to win an individual gold medal in four straight Olympics, having started her historic run at the inaugural women’s tournament in Athens in 2004.
Russia’s Alexander Karelin leads the short list of men with three wrestling golds.
Icho’s teammate, Saori Yoshida, will try to match Icho’s four consecutive golds Thursday.
Sakshi Malik won bronze to give India its first medal of the Rio Games.
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6:40 p.m.
It will be the United States versus Italy for women’s water polo gold.
Maggie Steffens scored four times and the U.S. beat Hungary 14-10 in the Rio semifinals. Maddie Musselman and Kiley Neushul had two goals apiece for the U.S., which is trying to become the first country to repeat as Olympic champions.
Italy advanced with a 12-9 victory over Australia in the first semifinal. Arianna Garibotti pumped in five goals and Roberta Bianconi scored twice as Italy improved to a perfect 5-0 in Rio de Janeiro.
Italy won the gold medal in 2004, but slipped to sixth in Beijing and finished seventh in London four years ago.
The United States has won 21 in a row, including its five games in Rio by a combined score of 61-27. It’s the only country to finish on the podium in each of the five Olympics for women’s water polo.
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6:35 p.m.
Wednesday was a tough day for the leading taekwondo fighters at the Rio Olympics: none of the top four ranked athletes in the women’s or men’s divisions made it out of the quarterfinals.
The current men’s world champion and top-ranked athlete, Iran’s Farzan Ashourzadeh Fallah, lost in the last seconds of his preliminary match and the second-seeded Taehun Kim of South Korea also was eliminated in his first fight of the day.
By the time the quarterfinals were over, the women’s double Olympic champion, China’s Jingyu Wu and all the other top six seeds were gone. So too were the men’s third- and fourth-ranked fighters.
The finals in the women’s 49-kilogram division Wednesday evening will be fought between Serbia’s eighth-ranked Tijana Bogdanovic and South Korea’s Sohul Kim, seeded seventh.
In the men’s 58-kilogram division, China’s Shuai Zhao, ranked eighth, will face 15th seed Tawin Hanprab of Thailand.
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6:15 p.m.
Lukas Klosertmann scored in the ninth minute and Nils Peterson added a goal in the 89th to put Germany into the Olympic gold-medal match with a 2-0 semifinal victory over Nigeria on Wednesday.
The Germans will play Brazil on Saturday at legendary Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. The stadium was the site of the German senior team’s World Cup victory in 2014.
Brazil defeated Honduras 6-0 earlier in the day at Maracana to put the hosts in the final. Neymar scored a pair of goals.
Nigeria will face Honduras in the bronze medal match Saturday in Belo Horizonte.
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6:10 p.m.
China’s dominance at the diving pool shows no signs of waning.
Si Yajie and Ren Qian went 1-2 in the preliminaries of women’s 10-meter platform Wednesday, setting themselves up to challenge for China’s sixth diving gold medal of the Rio Olympics.
Si scored no lower than 76.50 in any of the five rounds and posted the top score of 397.45 points. Ren was a bit off on her third dive but still claimed the second spot at 385.80.
No one else was even close. Jessica Parratto of the United States was third at 346.80.
The top 18 moved on to Thursday’s semifinals.
Reigning world champion Kim Kuk Hyang of North Korea won’t be one of them. She stunningly failed to advance out of the preliminaries, badly botching her fourth dive and finishing 25th out of 28 divers with just 263.20.
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6:10 p.m.
As Serbia’s Tijana Bogdanovic prepared to fight against a two-time Olympic taekwondo champion, she relied on one rather unorthodox training aide: YouTube.
In one of the most surprisingly one-sided fights of the taekwondo competition at the Rio Olympics, Bogdanovic easily eliminated China’s Jingyu Wu in the quarterfinals Wednesday. Wu won the Olympic title at the Beijing and London games and also holds a world championship silver medal.
After the fight, Bogdanovic described Wu as a “legend” and her idol. Bogdanovic said she learned Wu’s style by studying her fights online and prepped for the challenge with her sparring partner in Serbia.
Bogdanovic, ranked eighth, is a European taekwondo champion and next faces South Korea’s Sohui Kim in the women’s 49-kilogram division final Wednesday evening.
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5:55 p.m.
Kenyan steeplechase great Ezekiel Kemboi has been disqualified in his last race, losing the bronze medal he won Wednesday before he announced his retirement.
A jury decision says Kemboi stepped off the track after clearing a water jump during the 3,000-meter steeplechase final at the Olympic Stadium.
The decision was made after a protest by the French team, and France’s Mahiedine Mekhissi was awarded the bronze after finishing fourth.
Kemboi, the two-time Olympic champion, came in third behind protege and compatriot Conseslus Kiproto and American Evan Jager.
Kemboi said after the race that it was his last, ending a career that included Olympic titles in Athens in 2004 and London in 2012, and four straight world titles from 2009-15.
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5:50 p.m.
MEDAL ALERT: Eri Tosaka won gold in the 48-kilogram division of the women’s wrestling tournament, giving Japan its eighth Olympic gold in women’s freestyle with a last-second takedown.
Tosaka stunned Azerbaijan’s Mariya Stadnik 3-2 for her fourth consecutive world title.
Down to her final shot, Tosaka got a hold of Stadnik’s leg with five seconds left for a two-point takedown and an improbable win.
Stadnik took silver for the second Olympics in a row.
China’s Yanan Sun won bronze with a 10-0 blowout that lasted less than a period. Bulgaria’s Elitsa Atanasova Yankkova also took third
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5:40 p.m.
Tony Parker has said au revoir to France’s national team.
The star point guard for the San Antonio Spurs said following a 92-67 loss to Spain on Wednesday that he is retiring from international competition.
The 34-year-old has played in France’s program for nearly half his life and said it’s difficult to say goodbye.
Despite all his accomplishments in the NBA, Parker — the leading scorer in the EuroBasket tournament — had limited success as an international player. France didn’t qualify for the 2004 Athens Games or the 2008 Beijing Games and finished sixth in London four years ago.
France won its only Olympic medal — a silver — in 2000 when Parker wasn’t on the team.
He says he has “a lot of great memories. A lot of tough memories, but that’s sports.”
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5:20
Olivier Gers has been hired as the new CEO of track and field’s world governing body.
The IAAF says the 46-year-old Frenchman brings more than 20 years of commercial, marketing and media experience to the federation.
He currently is global president of LiquidThread, a division of Publicis Media Group, in Britain.
The appointment comes with the IAAF trying to rebuild credibility after a series of corruption and doping scandals.
Gers says the IAAF is “a multimillion-dollar business that needs to stay relevant, build its fan base and re-establish trust.”
He starts the new job Oct. 1.
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5:10 p.m.
MEDAL ALERT: Daniyar Yeleussinov defeated Uzbekistan’s Shakhram Giyasov and became the fourth straight boxer from Kazakhstan to win the Olympic welterweight gold medal.
Yeleussinov never seem affected by a vicious cut suffered in his semifinal bout that stopped the fight and gave him the win on points. He used some sharp lefts to rattle Giyasov and won 29-28 on all three scorecards.
Kazakhstan boxers Serik Sapiyev and Bakhyt Sarsekbayev won the last three welterweight gold medals.
Giyasov had defeated a London gold medalist during an upset run through the tournament to reach the final.
Yeleussinov finished seventh at the 2012 London Games.
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AP Summer Games website: http://summergames.ap.org
