First successes in rowing

A few hours before the opening ceremony at the Tokyo Olympics, the rowing competition began.

On the first day, preliminary races took place in six types of the program, and in four of them Russian rowers fought to reach the next stage.

The first domestic athlete to officially compete in Japan was Alexander Vyazovkin. Before him, Russian rowers had not competed in men's singles at the Olympics for 25 years - the last was Anton Sema in 1996, who took the final 16th place. In order to directly reach the quarterfinals, Vyazovkin had to get into the top three of his race. As a result, he became the second, losing only to the main favorite Damir Martin from Croatia. True, the result of the Russian was not very encouraging - his time was only 19th among all the other participants.

Anna Prakaten 'left a more vivid impression of herself.

The European champion in women's singles confidently won the preliminary race with the second time at that time.

In the future, the former Belarusian athlete was bypassed by six more girls, who had a sharp struggle for first place in their races, while Prakaten did not have worthy rivals in the preliminary round so that one of them could drive her.

A small surprise was presented by Ilya Kondratyev and Andrey Potapkin, performing in doubles.

They were selected for the Olympics at the last moment and by default should have been considered the main outsiders.

However, they also managed to finish in the top three, which allowed them to go directly to the semifinals right away.

Behind them was a good German crew with the 2009 World Champion Stefan Kruger in the lineup.

In a similar female discipline, the Russians did not show themselves.

Ekaterina Pitirimova and Ekaterina Kurochkina took fourth place, while showing the second among the worst results among all pairs.

To continue the fight, they will need to take part in the consolation race and try to avoid the last place.

True, it is not yet known when it will take place - the next three days of the rowing competition will not take place due to unfavorable weather conditions.

Tough selection in archery

Archery qualifying competitions were also held on Friday.

According to their results, playoffs were formed in all five disciplines and it became known with which of the rivals they would have to argue for medals.

The first to enter the shooting range were women, including three Russians.

The 2017 world champion Ksenia Perova performed as usual. She scored 664 points and finished eighth out of 64 participants. She lacked 11 points to the top three. It was formed exclusively by girls from South Korea, led by Ahn San, who broke the Olympic record 25 years ago. Elena Osipova finished 22nd, and Svetlana Gomboeva took 45th place. Later it turned out that Gomboeva had difficulty performing in the last sessions due to the intense heat and even lost consciousness when the competition was over.

Together, the Russians finished sixth in the team qualification.

They will start defending the silver medals of Rio da Janeiro with a match with Ukraine in the 1/8 finals.

If successful, they will compete for the next round with the American women.

The South Korean national team, which also broke the Olympic record, will play in the other half of the grid and will not bother the Russians until the final.

In the men's competition, Russia was represented only by Galsan Bazarzhapov.

In almost every of the 12 six-shot sessions, he began with confident hits in the top ten, but then all the time deviated from the center at the target.

As a result, he scored only 653 points and took 34th place.

The best was again the representative of South Korea and the youngest archer of this Olympics, Kim Jae Duk.

The 17-year-old boy earned 688 points.

On July 24, the Russians will try to win their first medals in the mixed tournament debuting at the Olympic Games.

It will feature Bazarzhapov and Perova.

Together they finished tenth in qualifying and will again avoid a dangerous encounter with the Koreans until the last match.

But before that, they will have to face duets that have shown better results in Tokyo.

First doping scandal

When all the competitions on Friday took place and the athletes had only to wait for the opening ceremony to begin, the first doping scandal of the Tokyo Olympics broke out.

Swiss athlete Karim Hussein tested positive for niketamide and N-methylnicotinamide metabolite.

The National Olympic Committee decided to disqualify the athlete for nine months starting July 16.

Hussein is the 2014 European Champion in the 400m hurdles and bronze medalist in 2016.

But in recent years, he has not been among the favorites of his discipline.

This season, the Swiss is ranked 25th in the world list with a score of 48.84 s, so he was not a contender for a medal.

New losses due to coronavirus

It will not be possible to perform in Tokyo and the Czech duo in the women's beach volleyball tournament, but the reason for this is different.

Marketa Slukova, paired with Barbara Germannova, tested positive for coronavirus.

On July 24, they were supposed to start performing at the group stage.

But the organizing committee of the Games announced that the Czech women would be removed from the competition.

Their rivals in Quartet F will receive technical victories and the corresponding points.

Germannova and Slukova occupy 16th place in the world rankings and had a chance to at least reach the playoffs.

Chusovitin without a flag

Friday ended with a colorful opening ceremony, an important part of which was the parade of nations with the participation of the national teams of all countries and their standard bearers.

Unfortunately, the event did not go smoothly.

On the eve of the Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, who came to her eighth Olympics, learned that she was deprived of the flag, which she was supposed to carry with boxer Bobo-Usmon Baturov.

“It was only yesterday that I didn’t carry the flag at the opening ceremony.

Why did it happen?

I have no explanation, otherwise I would have told you everything.

I was told that you will not carry the flag.

And that's it, there were no more explanations.

Of course, I am very offended.

When they asked me at the beginning, I said that I would definitely go.

After all, this is my final Olympics, I really wanted to carry the flag at the opening ceremony, ”the 46-year-old gymnast quotes TASS.

The National Olympic Committee of Uzbekistan said that they decided to change the standard-bearers so that they would not waste energy before their performances.

Chusovitina and Baturov were replaced by boxer Bakhodir Zhalolov and taekwondo player Nigora Tursunkulova.

Appointment of Russian judges

The Olympic football tournament is held without Russian players, but it cannot do without domestic referees. Anastasia Pustovoitova was assigned to the match between the women's teams of Japan and Great Britain, and Ekaterina Kurochkina became her assistant. The game will take place on July 24 at Sapporo Dome. She previously served as the fourth arbiter at the Sweden-USA match.