Category: Новини

This is not how USA Basketball expected to open its Olympic summer. Nigeria probably didn’t expect it, either. If there was any expectation of invincibility for the Americans heading into the Tokyo Olympics, it’s already gone — after Nigeria shocked the U.S. 90-87 on Saturday night. Nigeria pulled off an international shocker with a roster primarily filled of little-known NBA players that found a way to beat a group of All-NBA, All-Star and max-contract performers. “I thought that the Nigerian team played very physically, did a great job in that regard and knocked down a lot of 3s,” U.S. coach Gregg Popovich said. “Give them credit.” Gabe Nnamdi, who goes by Gabe Vincent when playing for the Miami Heat, led Nigeria with 21 points. Caleb Agada scored 17 points, Ike Nwamu added 13 and Nigeria outscored the U.S. 60-30 from 3-point range. Kevin Durant, who had never before played in a loss for USA Basketball in 39 senior international games, had 17 points. Jayson Tatum added 15, Damian Lillard had 14 and Bam Adebayo 11. “Just goes to show that we have to play better,” Tatum said. The Americans had gone 39-0 in their last three Olympic seasons — including pre-Olympic exhibitions — on their way to gold medals and had been 54-2 in major exhibitions since NBA players began playing for USA Basketball in 1992. Plus, they’d beaten Nigeria by a combined 127 points in their last two meetings, one at the 2012 London Games, the other a warm-up for the 2016 Rio Games. Nigeria lost to the U.S. at the 2012 Olympics by 83 points. Lost to the Americans again four years later in an exhibition, that time by 44 points.  Not this time. “Nigeria’s come a long way with their basketball,” USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo said.Nigeria coach Mike Brown calls to the team during an exhibition basketball game against the United States on Saturday, July 10, 2021, in Las Vegas.Ike Iroegbu — a former Washington State player who spent some time in the G League — hit a 3-pointer with about 1:15 left to put Nigeria up 88-80. Durant scored the next seven points for the U.S.; a 3-pointer, two free throws following a turnover, then two more from the line with 16.5 seconds remaining. Nnamdi made two foul shots with 13.2 seconds left to restore Nigeria’s 3-point edge. The Americans ran 9.7 seconds off the clock on the ensuing possession without getting a shot off, and Zach LaVine missed a pair of free throws — the second intentionally — with 3.5 seconds left. Precious Achiuwa got the rebound for Nigeria, and that was it. It’s only an exhibition — but the upset was still of the massive variety, the 22nd-ranked nation by FIBA beating the No. 1-ranked team and three-time reigning Olympic gold medalists. Popovich heard the final buzzer and shook hands with Nigeria coach Mike Brown, the Golden State assistant, as the Americans walked off stunned. There was an injury scare for the Americans late in the second quarter, when LaVine got hurt on a play where he was closing out against Nnamdi. He went airborne after a head fake and came down awkwardly, grabbing at his left ankle before getting up and going directly to the U.S. locker room. LaVine was fine and returned in the third quarter. The bigger scare was the scoreboard. Nigeria trailed only 43-41 at the half, led for long stretches of the opening 20 minutes, and simply wasn’t going away.  
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Argentina won their first major title in 28 years on Saturday and Lionel Messi finally won his first medal in a blue-and-white shirt when an Angel Di Maria goal gave them a 1-0 win over Brazil and a record-equaling 15th Copa America.   Di Maria, starting for just the second time in the Copa, justified his selection by scoring the opener midway through the first half.   Renan Lodi failed to cut out a long ball forward from Rodrigo De Paul and Di Maria lobbed the stranded Ederson with aplomb. Brazil piled on the pressure in an exciting second half but even with five strikers on the field they could not get an equalizer against an Argentine defense protected by the outstanding Rodrigo De Paul.   “First, we have to congratulate our opponents especially for the first half when they neutralized us,” Brazilian defender Thiago Silva said. “In the second half, there was no contest — only one team tried to play football, the other just wasted time as we knew they would. It’s not an excuse, we didn’t do what we had to, principally in the first half.” Argentina’s win was a particular triumph for Barcelona striker Messi, who picked up his first-ever title in a blue-and-white shirt after more than a decade of club and individual honors. The Argentine players surrounded their captain at the final whistle. Goalkeeper Emilian Martinez celebrated what he called a Maracanazo, a remarkable win at the famous Rio stadium.   “I’m speechless,” he said. “I knew my dream would come true, and where better than the Maracanazo and giving the title to the best in the world and fulfilling his dream.” Messi finished the tournament’s joint top goal scorer with four goals and was elected joint best player along with Neymar.   But he was quiet throughout the game at the Maracana stadium and uncharacteristically missed a golden opportunity to wrap the game up with 2 minutes remaining. When the final whistle went, Argentina TV declared “Argentina Champions, Lionel Messi Champion!”   The match itself was a disappointing one, with Argentina the better side in a cagey first half that featured 21 fouls. However, Brazil came out more aggressively in the second period and as the time ticked on, they threw more people forward — and at one point having five recognized strikers on the field.   Richarlison had a goal chalked off for offside 7 minutes into the second half and then forced Emiliano Martinez into a good stop 2 minutes later.   But as Brazil poured forward gaps opened up and Argentina missed two clear chances to score in the dying moments of the match. The victory was Argentina’s 15th Copa America triumph and means they draw level with Uruguay as the all-time leading winners. “This is a very big title,” Argentine coach Lionel Scaloni said. “I hope that Argentines can enjoy it. The fans love the team unconditionally and I think they identify with this side that never drops its guard.”   Their win extended their sequence of undefeated matches to 20 under Scaloni and handed Brazil their first competitive defeat since they lost to Belgium in the quarterfinals of the 2018 World Cup. 
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Top-seeded Ashleigh Barty became the first Australian to win the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis title in 41 years on Saturday in London.Barty defeated the Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3 to claim the title in the first three-setter in a Wimbledon final since 2012.It’s the second Grand Slam title for Barty, who won the French Open in 2019.”I didn’t sleep a lot last night. I was thinking of all the ‘what ifs,’ but when I came out on this court today I felt at home, in a way,” Barty said. “… And I think being able to share that with everyone here and share that with my team is incredible.”Barty, 25, became the first woman from Australia to win the Wimbledon final since seven-time major winner Evonne Goolagong Cawley did it in 1980. She’s also just the fourth player in the Open era to also have won the title as a junior (2011).It was also the 50th anniversary of Goolagong Cawley’s first Wimbledon title. “I hope I made Yvonne proud,” Barty said. Barty recorded seven aces and converted six of eight break opportunities in improving to 6-2 for her career against Pliskova, who is now 0-2 in Grand Slam finals (2016 U.S. Open).After splitting the first two sets, Barty opened up a 3-0 lead in the final set and then held on to serve out for the match in one hour, 55 minutes.”She played an incredible tournament and an incredible match today,” said an emotional Pliskova. “It wasn’t easy to close the second set. I was fighting very hard to make it difficult for her, but I think she played very well, so congrats to her and her team.”Hamburg European OpenElena Gabriela Ruse of Romania stunned top-seeded Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine 2-6, 6-1, 6-4 to reach the final in Germany.Ruse converted six of 15 break chances and was helped by Yastremska’s nine double faults.In the final, Ruse will face Germany’s Andrea Petkovic, who beat countrymate Jule Niemeier 7-6 (4), 4-6, 7-5 in the other semifinal.
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A sealed cartridge of The Legend of Zelda for the old Nintendo NES console has sold for a world record sum of $870,000, auction house Heritage Auctions said in a statement Friday.The cartridge, dated to 1987, is still in its original packaging and trumps the previous world record sale of a video game — $660,000 for a 1986 Super Mario Bros cartridge sold in April — according to the auction house.The game was the “masterpiece” in a sale of 443 lots that runs until Sunday, Eric Bradley, spokesperson for the Dallas-based company, told AFP.The auction house has not revealed the identity of the buyer.Blending adventure, action and exploration in a magical universe, Zelda is one of the most significant titles in the history of video games and one of Nintendo’s best-known series.Retro video games have become increasingly popular with nostalgic collectors in recent years, driving up prices for old-school consoles and cartridges at auctions. 
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In less than two weeks, more than 11,000 of the world’s best athletes will descend on Tokyo to compete at the most unusual Olympic Games in decades. Athletes will compete in empty stadiums after Olympics organizers reversed course Thursday and barred spectators in response to a major coronavirus resurgence. The decision came after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared a state of emergency in Tokyo, citing the rising rates of COVID-19. “Taking into consideration the impact of the delta strain, and in order to prevent the resurgence of infections from spreading across the country, we need to step up virus prevention measures,” Suga said.  Anti-Olympics protesters hold up signs and banner outside the event venue of the Tokyo 2020 Torch Relay, in Tokyo, Japan, July 9, 2021.The news that virtually no one would be allowed into the games was met with frustration from ticket holders and athletes but relief from many Japanese citizens, who have been protesting the games for months. A national survey conducted in May found that 83% of voters wanted to postpone or cancel the Olympics.Tennis player Nick Kyrgios announced his withdrawal from the games on Thursday via Twitter, citing the lack of fans and a leg injury. Ever since COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on the globe last year, the Toyko 2020 Olympic Games have been plagued by delays, mushrooming costs, health concerns and myriad other issues.  The official cost of the games is about $15.4 billion, but a government audit conducted last December estimated the real cost to be closer to $28 billion.  Roughly 7.8 million tickets were expected to be made available for the games, which would have brought in an estimated $800 million in revenue.  A woman walks past the Olympic rings lit up at dusk in the rain, on the Odaiba waterfront in Tokyo, July 9, 2021.Despite the rising costs and coronavirus concerns, more than 200 countries are still set to come together for peaceful competition from July 23 to August 8. According to entertainment data company Gracenote, the U.S. is expected to win the most medals overall by a wide margin.  “This would mark the seventh successive Summer Games during which the American team would have come out on top of the medal count competition,” Gracenote wrote.  China and Russia are predicted to place second and third in total medals, respectively. However, Russia isn’t officially competing as a country because of a two-year ban issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency for systematic doping of Russian athletes, a practice that is banned in international sports.  Instead, 335 Russian athletes will compete as neutral athletes under the name “Russian Olympic Committee” and are barred from using the Russian flag or national anthem.  Canada, Australia and North Korea have withdrawn from the Tokyo Olympics entirely because of the pandemic.
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Hannah Kumari has been an English soccer fan since childhood, but she never wanted to fly an England flag. Until now.Kumari is one of millions of fans ecstatic that England’s men’s team has reached the final of a major tournament for the first time since it won the World Cup in 1966. But like many British people of color, she’s had an ambivalent relationship with symbols of Englishness.Yet embracing them has come more easily thanks to the young, multi-ethnic squad that is on the cusp of triumph in the European Championship. After beating Denmark 2-1 in a semifinal on Wednesday that was watched by half the country’s population, England faces Italy in the final at London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday.”When I woke up this morning I thought, ‘I’m going to buy a St. George’s flag to hang out the window for Sunday,'” Kumari, who was born and raised in England to an Indian mother and Scottish father, said the day after the Denmark game.”I’ve never owned an England shirt,” the actor-writer said.”Something has definitely changed,” she said. “I feel almost like that team has given me permission to feel like I can wear an England shirt.”England’s Raheem Sterling celebrates a goal during the Euro 2020 soccer championship semifinal match between England and Denmark at Wembley stadium in London, July 7, 2021.Ready for hopeThe last few years have been hard on England and the rest of the United Kingdom. Britain’s exit from the European Union — a decision driven in part by a backlash against immigration — left the country scratchy and divided. More than 128,000 people have died in the U.K. during the coronavirus pandemic, the highest toll in Western Europe.Euro 2020 — the name is a year out of date thanks to the pandemic — has provided a much-needed jolt of excitement and fun. Millions weary of lockdowns and bad news are backing a team whose members speak out against racism, take a knee before games, support LGBT pride, campaign against poverty and, crucially, win games.For decades, supporting England has been synonymous with dashed hopes. The lyrics of the country’s most popular soccer anthem, “Three Lions,” originally released in 1996, evokes England’s 1966 triumph and the long drought that followed: “Thirty years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming.”Those 30 years have become 55, but once again England is dreaming.Very different squadThe country’s hopes rest on a team very different from the all-white squad of 1966. A poster created by the Museum of Migration showed what the England team would look like without the players who had a parent or grandparent born abroad: Just three of the 11 starting players remained. Missing were stars who included team captain Harry Kane, whose father is Irish; Marcus Rashford, whose mother is from Saint Kitts; Jamaica-born Raheem Sterling; and Buyako Saka, a Londoner with Nigerian parents.The team is known less for wild off-the-pitch antics than for social responsibility, epitomized by 23-year-old Rashford’s campaign against child poverty, which persuaded the government to restore free lunches for thousands of poor children.Last week, Kane, 27, wore a rainbow armband to support LGBT pride during England’s match against Germany.The players may be young multimillionaires, but they celebrate their local as well as international roots. Rashford’s childhood in a working-class Manchester community inspires his anti-poverty work; Kalvin Phillips is a proud son of the northern city of Leeds; Sterling calls himself the “boy from Brent,” after the London borough where he grew up.English flags fly from balconies near Wembley stadium in London, July 9, 2021.A shift in EnglishnessFor some, their success is helping to make Englishness a source of pride rather than awkwardness.The English make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 67 million inhabitants, but English patriotism and the country’s red-and-white St. George flag were long shunned by liberal-minded Britons, associated with football hooligans and narrow-minded “Little Englanders.” Britishness was regarded as a more welcoming identity by many U.K.-born and foreign-born citizens alike.England’s rugby, cricket and soccer teams have done much to strip the English flag of its negative associations in recent years. The increasing prominence of Scottish and Welsh flags and symbols as those countries gained more political autonomy over the last two decades has also made many people reflect on what English identity means.”There has been an enormous intergenerational shift towards a civic and inclusive English identity that crosses ethnic and faith grounds,” said Sunder Katwala, director of the equality think-tank British Future. “Most migrants to Britain haven’t identified as English, but interestingly, their children have.”Katwala said sports teams and tournaments don’t drive social change but “ratify that shift that has been happening in society.””When I was a teenager we associated football with all of the negative aspects of English identity: With violence, with racism, with hooliganism,” Katwala said.He said the modern, multicultural England team is part of a “culture shift” that has “changed the public conversation about what is English.”Some critics, some boosNot everyone thinks the national soccer team represents all that is best about England. Some conservative commentators have derided the players as uncomfortably “woke.” Team members have been booed by some fans while taking a knee against racism before games. Home Secretary Priti Patel has criticized the kneeling, calling it “gesture politics,” and declined to condemn the booing.Victory has silenced much of the criticism, at least temporarily. Politicians have jumped on the England bandwagon. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often criticized protests over racism and Britain’s imperial past, attended Wednesday’s game, awkwardly wearing an England jersey over his dress shirt. He’s under pressure to declare a national holiday if England wins the final on Sunday.Some have compared Britain’s political leaders unfavorably to the national team’s understated manager, Gareth Southgate, who forged his young players into England’s most cohesive squad in many years.England manager Gareth Southgate celebrates after the victory over Denmark on July 7, 2021.School of SouthgateIf the tournament has been therapeutic for England, it is also redemptive for the 50-year-old Southgate. He played for England in the 1990s, and his failed penalty kick during the Euros semi-final in 1996 handed victory to Germany.Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Thangam Debbonaire urged Johnson to study at “the Gareth Southgate school of leadership.””The British people will be asking themselves who they want to lead them. Do they want someone who works hard and has a relentless focus on embodying British values, or do they want the current prime minister?” Debbonaire said in the House of Commons.Southgate addressed the team’s critics in an open letter at the start of the tournament, saying his players would not “stick to football” and keep quiet about social issues.”I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players,” he wrote. “It’s clear to me that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that.” 
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At the age of 55, Alisa Leht fell in love with ballroom dancing. Today – at 71 – she is on the dance floor every other day, training for hours and taking part in dancing competitions. Liliya Anisimova met with Leht to talk about her passion. Anna Rice narrates her story.  Camera: Liliya Anisimova   
 
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The Olympic flame arrived Friday in Tokyo, but the public will be kept away at a low-key welcoming ceremony because of coronavirus fears, the day after a “heartbreaking” announcement that spectators would be banned from most games events.On a rainy morning exactly two weeks before the opening ceremony of the biggest sporting event since the pandemic began, the flame was brought on stage in a lantern and handed to Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.Tokyo 2020 organizers and government officials announced Thursday night their decision to bar fans from Olympic events in the capital, which will be under a virus emergency throughout the games.It means the pandemic-postponed games will be the first to take place largely behind closed doors. A handful of competitions will take place outside the capital.The torch relay was meant to build excitement for the games, but it has been pulled from public roads in the capital to prevent crowds spreading the virus as infections rise.Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra members perform during the unveiling ceremony of the Olympic flame at the Komazawa Olympic Park General Sports Ground in Tokyo, July 9, 2021.Before the flame arrived, five male trumpet players dressed in suits played a rousing melody under a gazebo to shelter them from the drizzle, in front of only journalists and a handful of officials.The stands stood empty at the Komazawa Olympic Park stadium in the capital’s southeastern suburbs, which was used in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.”I’m glad that we welcome the torch relay, with these legacies we proudly show at home and abroad,” Koike said.But the Tokyo governor, who was recently hospitalized for exhaustion, coughed three times during her brief speech and several more times after that.Hint of what’s to comeFriday’s event gave a taste of the atmosphere that could await athletes at the opening ceremony, to be held at the National Stadium in the city center.The decision to bar fans came after the government said a state of emergency would be imposed in Tokyo throughout the games to curb a rebound in infections and fears over the more infectious delta variant that has led to virus resurgences in many countries.On Thursday night, Koike could not hide her disappointment.”I feel heartbreaking grief about this decision,” she said.When the 2020 Games were postponed last year as the scale of the pandemic became clear, there was talk they would be staged as proof the world had overcome the virus.But that triumphant tone has given way to the harsh reality of new infection surges and more contagious variants.Troubled relayThe nationwide torch relay has been fraught with problems since it began in March, with almost half the legs disrupted in some way.The relay was forced off public roads in famous tourist cities such as Kyoto and Hiroshima over fears that crowds of fans could spread the virus.And it has also met with some public opposition, with a 53-year-old woman arrested on Sunday for squirting liquid from a water pistol toward a runner.
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