Malcolm's golden goal and harsh criticism from Guberniev: what will be remembered for the 15th day of the Games in Tokyo

The defeat of Russia in water polo and the victory of the United States in basketball

The penultimate day of the Olympic Games in Tokyo turned out to be the most successful for Russian athletes.

In total, they won seven medals, three of which are gold.

Victories were won by domestic synchronized swimmers in the group competition, freestyle wrestler Abdulrashid Sadulayev in the weight category up to 97 kg and athlete Maria Lasitskene in the high jump.

Silver went to the country's men's volleyball team, "beach players" Vyacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovsky, as well as Dina Averina in the individual all-around rhythmic gymnastics.

Finally, another wrestler Gadzhimurad Rashidov in the category up to 65 kg was content with bronze.

In team sports, the Russians on Saturday, in addition to men's volleyball, fought for medals in women's water polo.

The national team of the country in the semifinals gave a fight to the strongest team in the world - the USA, but lost, and in the match for third place they met with Hungary.

Their paths to Tokyo had already crossed at the group stage, and that confrontation ended in a draw - 10:10.

Unfortunately, this time the charges of Alexey Gaidukov were defeated.

The reason for the failure, among other things, was not the most successful game of the leaders.

Nobody managed to distinguish themselves more than two times.

For example, Ekaterina Prokofieva made seven shots at the rivals' goal, but only two were effective.

Alena Serzhantova excelled only once.

20-year-old Hungarian goalkeeper Alda Magyari, on the other hand, caught the courage and made one rescue after another.

In general, her assets include ten saves with a reliability indicator of 53%.

For comparison: Anna Karnauch has six and 38%.

The starting quarter ended in a draw - 2: 2.

The Russians conceded first, but responded to the rivals' goal with two of their effective throws.

In the future, the opponent began to rapidly go into the lead.

Two goals by Wanda Valya allowed the two-time world champions to break away before the big break - 7: 5.

However, in the third quarter, the Russians managed to turn the tide of an unsuccessfully developing match.

At a difficult moment, it was Prokofieva who recalled herself, twice in a row, hitting someone else's gates.

And then Sergeantova for the second time in the meeting brought the team forward.

But the girls failed the final eight minutes.

They could do nothing with Magyari's magic and only once upset her.

The Hungarians scored four goals and won - 11: 9.

It is not surprising that Gaidukov, after the final siren, complained about the poor implementation of the chances.

“The match with the USA, in which we had a good chance of winning, took a lot of nervous energy.

It was not easy for the girls to recover psychologically.

Today they left all their strength in the pool, fought to the last.

Honor and praise to them, ”the ROC Telegram channel quotes the expert.

In the final, the struggle, to put it mildly, did not work out.

The Americans defeated the Spaniards with a difference of nine goals (14: 5) and became Olympic champions for the third time in a row.

In the decisive confrontation of the men's football championship, Brazil and Spain, as expected, came together.

Perhaps it was difficult to imagine a more intriguing match.

However, the Latin Americans had the advantage for most of the meeting and deserved to win.

At the end of the first half, Andre Soares Jardinet's wards quite naturally earned a penalty, but Richarlison shot above the gate.

But in the time added by the referee, Matheus still managed to open the score.

The Spaniards bounced back quickly enough.

At the end of an hour of the fight, Mikel Oyarzabal in touch closed the lumbago of Carlos Soler from the right flank.

And shortly before the final whistle, "Red Fury" could snatch a victory at all, but the opponent was rescued twice by the crossbar.

Before the start of extra time, Jardinet threw Zenit midfielder Malcolm into the fight, and this change turned out to be fateful.

In the 108th minute, the footballer scored the golden goal.

He received the ball from the depths, burst into the penalty area and accurately shot into the distant one.

So Brazil became the Olympic champion for the second time in a row.

The men's basketball tournament ended with the natural victory of the US team, the fourth in a row at the Olympic Games and the 16th in history.

In Tokyo, the Stars and Stripes created the appearance of intrigue and even unexpectedly lost to France in the group stage.

However, in the final, Greg Popovich's team took revenge - 87:82.

The favorite kept the opponent at a distance throughout the decisive match and eventually won three quarters out of four.

The Europeans were let down by the implementation, for example, Rudy Gobert missed seven free throws.

In fact, they were not enough to win.

The most productive player of the match was Kevin Durant with 29 points.

Jason Tatum added 19 more.

Also among the winners is Javail McGee.

Together with their mother Pamela, they became the first ever mother-son duo to win Olympic gold.

France did not remain without awards in women's basketball either.

In the match for the third place, the team beat Serbia with an advantage of 15 points - 91:76.

But in men's handball, the tricolor was once again not equal.

They won the third of the last four Olympic Games.

Only in 2016, the team was content with silver, losing to the Danes in the final.

In Tokyo, the French took revenge on them (25:23) and again rose to the highest step of the podium.

In the end, bronze medals also went to Europe.

Handball players from Egypt created the main sensation of the tournament, reaching the semifinals of the Games for the first time in history, but they did not have enough strength for the decisive matches.

In the meeting for the third place, the Africans were weaker than Spain - 31:33.

Rowing Failure and Troubled Start in Rhythmic Gymnastics

After Dina and Arina Averins were left without gold in the individual all-around, special attention was paid to rhythmic gymnastics.

Now the Russians simply have no right not to win in the group all-around.

However, it did not start very well for the national team.

After two types, the domestic five in the person of Anastasia Bliznyuk, Anastasia Maksimova, Angelina Shkatova, Anastasia Tatareva and Alisa Tishchenko takes only second place with 89.050 points.

Bulgaria is in the lead (91,800), which won both ball and hoop exercises.

Russia in its last form has become the third at all.

Another medal could well have been won by Alexander Bondar and Viktor Minibaev.

Previously, they took bronze in synchronized diving from a ten-meter platform, and now they intended to do it in an individual tournament.

The results of the qualification were also encouraging, in which Bondar took third place.

Alexander was close to getting on the pedestal this time too.

As a result, he was left with an offensive "piece of wood" - the fourth line.

In many ways, his performance was spoiled by an unsuccessful starting jump, for which the domestic athlete received only 75.20 points from the judges.

After this, it was already impossible to catch up with the Chinese Yuan Chao and Jian Yang, as well as the Briton Thomas Daly.

Minibaev, winner of the Olympic Games in London in this discipline, scored 495.85 points and finished right after his compatriot.

If in diving the Russians in Tokyo won at least one award, then in rowing and canoeing - zero.

This happened for the first time since the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where the USSR national team simply did not come.

There was a hope that domestic rowers would climb the podium at least on the last day of competition, but this was not destined to come true.

They were closest to success in the men's four-row kayak.

Artyom Kuzakhmetov, Alexander Sergeev, Roman Anoshkin and Maxim Spesivtsev qualified for the final only from the fourth place in their swim, but there they almost made it into the top three.

In the battle for the bronze, they lost just over 0.1 seconds to the Slovaks.

In a similar form for women, Natalya Podolskaya, Anastasia Dolgova, Kira Stepanova and Svetlana Chernigovskaya only made it to the B final, but even there they took last place.

Finally, Irina Andreeva and Olesya Romasenko, who also made their way to the decisive swim, had all the chances for medals in the 500 m double canoe.

But it was not even close to compete for the awards - the eighth line, almost six seconds behind the third.

The disastrous performance of Russian rowers prompted the famous journalist Dmitry Guberniev to speak out with harsh criticism on social networks.

“There is a feeling that the coaches of the national team need to change jobs.

The team arrived in Tokyo completely unprepared.

We were left without medals in the Olympic rowing and canoeing competitions.

For the first time in history, ”wrote Guberniev on the Telegram channel.

In turn, the president of the All-Russian Federation of Kayaking and Canoeing Yevgeny Arkhipov called the performance of the national team in Japan "unsatisfactory."

This time I failed to compete for medals on the cycle track.

Anastasia Voinova was the farthest in the women's sprint.

In the 1/8 finals, she lost to Leah Sophia Friedrich (Germany), and in the consolation race she fell behind Laurent Genes (Canada) and Matilda Gros (France).

But in the men's keirin Denis Dmitriev, who was close to winning an award in the sprint, took second place in his race and was directly selected for the quarterfinals.

In turn, Ivan Gladyshev first performed unsuccessfully in the first round, and then did not take advantage of his attempt to break through to the next stage through the consolation.

Alexander Lifanov also failed to please the fans in modern pentathlon.

He got off to a good start, but ended up only in tenth place with 1450 points.

Moreover, after the first type of fencing, he occupied the second line in the overall standings.

However, in swimming, the Russian showed an extremely weak 27th result and immediately dropped to fifth.

And after riding, Alexander lost one more position.

In the decisive form of running, it was not possible to rectify the situation.

As a result, instead of fighting for medals, Lifanov collapsed at the end of the top ten.

The victory was won by the representative of Great Britain Joe Chung, who was ahead of the Egyptian Ahmed Al-Gendi and the Korean Tszyun Wun-tae.

In boxing, on the penultimate day of competition, the fate of four gold medals was determined.

But the greatest attention of the fans was attracted by the final of the weight category up to 75 kg for men.

World champion Alexander Khizhnyak was considered the clear favorite of the confrontation with the Brazilian Ebert Conceisao and had an excellent opportunity to bring Ukraine the second highest award at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Throughout the fight, Khizhnyak had an undeniable advantage and confidently led according to the judges' estimates.

In the final round, it would have been more correct for him to stop and take a break, but Alexander continued beating his opponent and eventually paid for it.

In the middle of the third round, he missed an unexpected left side and literally collapsed into the ring.

The athlete immediately got to his feet and showed that he was ready to continue the fight, but the judge made a different decision.

Distraught with happiness, Conceizao shouted loudly across the empty arena and showed the Brazilian flag to the stands.

In Ukraine, however, they were extremely dissatisfied with the referee's verdict.

The country's boxing federation assured that Khizhnyak was able to bring the fight to the end.

“In order for boxing to remain boxing, and not the theater of one judge, it is necessary to invite professional referees to the Olympics, and not showmen who have neither an understanding of history, nor an understanding of sports justice, nor common sense in their heads,” said the head of the federation Vladimir Prodivus.