Olympics Live Updates: Schedule, Tokyo News and Results

CHIBA, Japan — Either way on Tuesday night, Tamyra Mensah-Stock knew there would be a first.

Since women’s wrestling was added to the Summer Olympics in 2004, a Black woman had never won the top prize. But in the light heavyweight gold medal match at Makuhari Messe Hall, Mensah-Stock, a Texas native whose father came to the United States from Ghana at 30, was going up against Blessing Oborududu of Nigeria.

“Oooooh, it was awesome,” Mensah-Stock said afterward with her usual zeal and earnestness.

“Oh my gosh, look at us representing,” she added later. “And I’m like, if one of us wins, we’re making history. You’re making history, I’m making history, we’re making history. It’s fantastic. It meant a lot. I’m so proud of Blessing. I was looking at her, ‘Dang, she’s killing it.’ But I can kill it, too.”

And Mensah-Stock, 28, certainly did, dominating her opponents throughout the Tokyo Games and beating Oborududu, 32, by a score of 4-1 to become the second American woman to win a wrestling gold medal after Helen Maroulis in 2016.

Asked about the feat after the match, she said: “Young women are going to see themselves in a number of ways. And they’re going to look up there and go: ‘I can do that. I can see myself.’”

Then Mensah-Stock signaled toward her head, saying: “Look at this natural hair. Come on, man! I made sure I brought my puffballs out so they could know that you can do it, too.”

Serving as a symbol to others has long been on Mensah-Stock’s mind. Back home in Katy, Texas, she started wrestling in 10th grade after she was bullied in track and field, her sport of choice. She reluctantly switched to wrestling at the behest of her twin sister, a wrestler, but soon found that the sport not only unlocked her athletic ability but also helped her develop confidence.

Mensah-Stock said she wanted other young women, perhaps those who felt as she once did, to see that “you can be silly, you can have fun, and you can be strong, you can be tough and you can be a wrestler.”

In her first year wrestling, Mensah-Stock finished second in the state championships but knew more was to come. She told a friend that they would be Olympians one day. In 2016, she made it to the Rio Games, but only as a practice partner for her teammates when she failed to secure a spot in the competition.

“From the very beginning, I knew I could get here,” she said.

Although a Black woman hadn’t won an Olympic gold in wrestling before, Mensah-Stock rattled off the names of Black wrestlers who had achieved so much before her. Among them: Toccara Montgomery, who finished seventh in the 2004 Games, and Randi Miller, who won a bronze medal in the 63-kilogram weight class in 2008.

“They paved the way for me, and I was like, ‘I know you guys could have done it, so I’m going out there and I’m going to accomplish this,’” Mensah-Stock said.

Before the gold medal match, Mensah-Stock struggled to sleep because of nerves. She said her coach, Izzy Izboinikov, made sure she ate something. Watching other wrestlers from the United States compete earlier on Tuesday made her anxiety worse.

“It wasn’t pretty,” she said.

But after the clock ran out and Mensah-Stock was the winner, she formed a heart sign with her hands and showed it to both sides of the arena. The television broadcast showed her family, watching from the United States, making the same gesture in response. From the stands, her training partner Maya Nelson clapped and shouted with so much glee that her mask couldn’t stay on.

The heart sign, she later said, was a tribute to her loved ones: her father who died in a car crash after leaving one of her high school tournaments, a tragedy that nearly led her to quit wrestling; her uncle, a former professional boxer, who died of cancer; her grandfather who also died of cancer; a late friend who was also a wrestler; her husband, her mother, her aunt, her sister and the entire country.

“I’m trying to send love to everyone,” she said.

Skateboarding was added to the Olympics with the hope that it would instill the Summer Games with a jolt of youthful rebellion. One way it has been doing that in Tokyo is by starring true youth.

While the street competition wrapped up last week, with Yuto Horigome and Momiji Nishiya of Japan winning golds, women’s park will be held Wednesday (Tuesday night in the U.S.), and men’s park will follow on Thursday at Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo.

Who are some skateboarders to watch?

The youngest athletes in the women’s park event have reasonable expectations to win medals.

Kokona Hiraki of Japan is 12 (she will turn 13 a few weeks after the Olympics), but two bigger favorites are 13-year-old Sky Brown of Britain and 15-year-old Misugu Okamoto of Japan.

Beyond their diminutive sizes and flying acrobatics in the bowl, Brown and Okamoto are a study in contrasts. Brown is the effervescent daughter of a British father and Japanese mother, who grew up mostly in Japan and now lives mostly in California. Her smile will earn her fans in at least three countries.

Okamoto is a quiet and straight-faced competitor, the best park skater of the past couple of years, leading a deep Japanese contingent that may capture more medals in skateboarding than any other country.

Others are likely to be gobbled up mostly by the United States and Brazil. That is the other thing that skateboarding promises besides youth — the likelihood of medalists from four continents and a broad range of diversity and personalities.

Who are some of the other stars?

Men’s park is a wide-open contest that promises high-flying acrobatics, perfect for television. American talent runs deep: Heimana Reynolds, ranked No. 1 in the world, No. 2 Cory Juneau and Zion Wright (from Hawaii, California and Florida, respectively) could each win a medal — or none at all. A trio from Brazil might interfere, as could maybe Oskar Rozenberg of Sweden.

Rune Glifberg of Denmark will get attention because, at 46, he looks like most everyone else’s dad. He won an X Games medal in 1995, before most Olympic skateboarders were born.

What is the difference between street and park?

If you watch snowboarding at the Winter Olympics, think of street and park a little like slopestyle and halfpipe — variations in the setting that feature slightly different types of acrobatics.

While street is a playground of stairs, rails and short ramps, meant to simulate something like a schoolyard, park is meant to evoke a swimming pool. It is a deep and unsymmetrical bowl of steep drops and contours. Athletes will navigate it in a single nonstop stretch for 45 seconds, or until they fall. They will launch and spin high over the bowl’s lip and drop back into the pool to gather speed to do it again. A panel of judges will score each athlete’s three runs, and the best score is the only one that counts.

In both street and park, the fields of 20 men and 20 women (featuring no more than three per country in each discipline and gender) will each be reduced to eight finalists, who will come back later in the day and start over again.

TOKYO — First, an admission: I know very little about the sport of equestrian.

That said, I do possess a lot of knowledge about Bruce Springsteen.

I know that he initially gave up on playing the guitar his mother got for him and returned it to the shop. Too hard. I know that “The River,” his song about a teenage couple who give up on their dreams because she gets pregnant, is about his sister, who is still married to the boyfriend in the song.

I have also known for a while that Springsteen’s 29-year-old daughter, Jessica, is one of the country’s top equestrian athletes.

I have never met Bruce, though I have “seen” him many times, and I do consider him a kind of companion of the past four decades whose songs are the soundtrack of my life. We’ve driven across the country together. You know what I mean.

So I figured I owed it to my imaginary good friend to take a break from track and field to deliver an eyewitness report on his daughter and her 12-year-old bay stallion, Don Juan Van De Donkhoeve.

After several nights in the sweaty hotbox that is the cavernous interior of the Olympic Stadium, the Equestrian Park was a revelation, a breezy and serene and elegant venue of bright lights and purple and blue hues. Just after 9:30 p.m., it was time for Springsteen and Don, as she calls her stallion, to make their long-awaited Olympic debut, the 49th competitors of the night. She entered the arena with a sparkle in her eye and a wide, gleaming smile.

Horse and rider took in the grounds for a few moments as the starting bell sounded, and then they were off, bounding over jump after jump, accelerating across the water hazard in the middle of the ring. They were fast and clean until the second to last set of jumps, when Don clipped a single pole, then cruised into the finish just over a second below the optimum time of 89 seconds.

The performance put Springsteen in 24th place, with 24 competitors left. The top 30, including ties, would advance. A waiting game ensued. Every rider that put up a clean, fast ride pushed Springsteen farther down in the rankings.

In the press zone, as she dropped into a tie for 25th and then 27th, Springsteen noted how many good horses and riders were left. She seemed to know this was going the wrong way.

And yet she luxuriated in a spotlight brighter than anything she has experienced.

“It’s not only my first Olympics, it’s my first championship,” she said. “I had some jitters coming in.”

Elimination came five riders from the end, when Maikel van der Vleuten of the Netherlands posted a clean ride and sent Springsteen into a tie for 31st, one spot out of Thursday’s final. No American rider advanced. There’s fodder for a sad ballad in there somewhere.

But, Bruce, know this, too, one dad to another, from 6,700 miles away: Your girl did good.