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    Adam Stites

    Adam Stites

  • The good, the bad and the ugly of the 2016 Rio Olympics

    The Rio Olympics are officially over with IOC President Thomas Bach declaring the Games of the 31st Olympiad finished at the Closing Ceremony on Sunday night.

  • Watch: Usain Bolt is also really good at throwing javelins

    After his final Olympics race, Usain Bolt still had one more athletic feat left in him. Usain Bolt is the unquestioned fastest man in the world, but the Jamaican sprinter gave a glimpse of more of his outstanding physical talent with a tremendous javelin toss. The 30-year-old sprinter capped his Olympic career with a ninth gold medal Friday night, anchoring Jamaica’s winning 4×100-meter relay team and tearing away from the rest of the field down the stretch.

  • Last-second head kick earns first-ever gold for Cote d'Ivoire

    A “last-second” victory can be a bit of an overused cliché in sports, but the first gold medal in Olympic history for Cote d’Ivoire came with a well-placed kick at the last possible moment. Cheick Sallah Cisse was trailing by one point in the men’s 80-kilogram taekwondo final when the referee separated him from Great Britain’s Lutalo Muhammad. With exactly one second left on the clock, there was time for just one more desperate move: a spinning heel kick to Muhammad’s head that somehow landed in time, earning him three points and an 8-6 victory.

  • Russian wrestler says she was hit in the face twice by wrestling chief for losing

    Inna Trazhukova made it all the way to the semifinals of the women’s 63-kilogram division in freestyle wrestling before a pair of back-to-back losses on Thursday ended the Russian’s hopes for a medal. According to Artur Petrosyan of Sport-Express in Russia, the 25-year-old wrestler is planning to take legal action against Mikhail Mamiashvili for the assault.

  • Watch: Olympic diver eliminated with epic belly flop

    Ahmad Amsyar Azman got more than zero points for his dive, but that’s just about the only thing positive that the Malaysian can take away from his disastrous jump that will undoubtedly end up on Olympic blooper reels for years to come. Earlier in the Olympics, Russia’s Nadezha Bazhina managed to get a score of zero on a back flop, so Azman can objectively say his dive wasn’t the worst of the Rio Olympics, but it was certainly close. Malaysia’s Ahmad Amsyar Azman competes during the men’s 3-meter springboard diving preliminary round at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

  • Olympian's dive for the gold sparks internet debate

    Allyson Felix became the most decorated female track athlete in United States history with a silver medal in the 400 meter, but a dive at the finish line by Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas kept Felix from gold. The fall to the track for Miller was the finish to a personal best of 49.44 seconds in the event, just 0.07 seconds ahead of Felix’s time of 49.51.

  • Simone Biles isn't hanging her head after bronze medal performance

    Simone Biles has been unstoppable at the Rio Olympics and a record five gold medals looked well within her reach. Earlier in the day, Biles told reporters that “any medal is amazing.” Her Olympic spirit has been impossible to crack, even when her own tremendous performances pushed the bar to a standard she ultimately couldn’t reach.

  • Young Brazilian fan feels every emotion possible during beach volleyball match

    There are emotional roller coasters, and then there’s the gamut of emotions that one young Brazilian fan traversed in a beach volleyball match at the Rio Olympics. Brazil is home to the No. 1 seeded duo of Larissa Franca and Talita Antunes, but the pair had a tough battle with Switzerland’s Nadine Zumkehr and Joana Heidrich on Sunday. After dropping the first set, the Brazilians had to stave off three match points in the second set to earn a comeback victory.

  • Mystery solved: Why are stuffed animals being thrown in Olympic wrestling?

    Greco-Roman wrestling competition in the 2016 Rio Olympics began on Sunday and with it came throws, pins, a wrestler getting choked unconscious and … stuffed animals getting thrown into the competition? On multiple occasions in the first day of wrestling, a plush of Vinicius, the official mascot of the Rio Games, was thrown on to the mat. Think of the Vinicius plush as wrestling’s equivalent to a challenge flag in the NFL.

  • Olympic wrestler gets choked unconscious, comes back to win gold

    Roman Vlasov certainly didn’t look like a wrestler on his way to a second gold medal when he was flat on his back, slowly regaining consciousness. Vlasov, 25, won the 74-kilogram gold medal in Greco-Roman in the 2012 London Olympics, and snagged the title again in Rio, although the road to victory didn’t come without controversy. In earlier competition, Vlasov appeared to blow a 6-3 lead to Kim Hyeon-Woo, but judges ruled the South Korean’s move was worth two points rather than four.

  • Madison Kocian earns silver for United States in uneven bars

    On a team of superstars, Madison Kocian earned her time in the gymnastics spotlight Sunday by grabbing the silver medal in the uneven bars. Kocian and Gabby Douglas were the two United States gymnasts represented in the event, which was the only one that Simone Biles didn’t qualify to compete in. While Douglas, the all-around gold medal winner in the 2012 Olympics, was a favorite to win the event, she finished with a disappointing score of 15.066 that earned her the seventh spot out of eight.

  • Shaun White isn't ruling out competing in skateboarding in 2020 Olympics

    Two-time gold medalist Shaun White reiterated that he still intends to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics, but he also told NBC’s Ryan Seacrest that the 2020 Summer Games could be a possibility now that skateboarding has been added to the mix. White, 29, became the face of snowboarding in the 2006 Torino Games when he earned gold in men’s halfpipe and later defended his title in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

  • Lithuanian weightlifter lands a perfect backflip to celebrate bronze

    When Aurimas Didzbalis stepped up for his final lift of the Rio Olympics, he was already guaranteed a spot on the podium. While the crowd sounded disappointed by his failed attempt, he channeled his inner Simone Biles and immediately followed the attempt with a perfectly executed backflip that earned him a big ovation. Didzbalis, 25, was the 2015 European world champion in the 93-kilogram weight class, but was edged in Rio by Vadzim Straltsou of Belarus for silver and Iran’s Sohrab Moradi for gold.

  • Simone Manuel's race delayed because the bus driver got lost

    Simone Manuel’s encore performance to her 100-meter freestyle victory Thursday night was a fourth-place finish in her 50-meter freestyle semifinal, earning her a spot in the final on Saturday. The Olympic Aquatics Stadium is just about a half-mile away from the athletes village, but the confused bus driver instead took the swimmers to the track and field stadium, according to one of the riders on the bus. When Manuel finally dove in the pool on Friday, it was 11:49 p.m. in Rio de Janeiro.

  • Michael Phelps finishes in remarkable three-way swimming tie

    Joseph Schooling pulled off the upset on Friday, defeating Michael Phelps and earning the gold in the 100m butterfly. Maybe three silver medals will convince FINA, the international federation for aquatics competition, to narrow their margins to thousandths of a second.

  • Dutch gymnast sent home from Olympics for drinking

    Dutch gymnast Yuri van Gelder had a strong start to his Olympics, earning a spot in the rings final, but won’t get a chance to compete for a medal in the event after he was sent back home for drinking alcohol. Van Gelder left the Olympic Village after his performance in the preliminaries on Saturday and returned on Sunday, according to the Netherlands Olympics Committee (NOC). Upon his return he admitted he drank alcohol, which is against the rules for Dutch athletes.

  • Brazil's first gold medalist overcome with emotion after upset victory

    Brazil had to wait until the third day of the Rio Olympics to get a gold medal, but it may have been worth the wait because it made Rafaela Silva’s reaction that much better. The 24-year-old judoka held her emotions in check when she thought she won in the first minute of her match against world No. 1 Sumiya Dorjsuren of Mongolia. Silva is a native of the largest favela in Brazil and an easy character for the home crowd to rally behind.

  • Kobe Bryant's Venezuelan cousin is unsurprisingly shot happy

    Kobe Bryant elected not to participate in the 2016 Olympics, but fans were treated to the next best thing Monday night when Bryant’s cousin took more shots than any other player on the floor in Team USA’s game against Venezuela. Venezuela’s John Cox, 35, put up 20 field goal attempts against the United States, but finished with just 19 points. No other Venezuelan player attempted even 10 shots and Carmelo Anthony led the USA with 11 field goal attempts.

  • Novak Djokovic dropped in first round of Rio Olympics

    The No. 1 tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, couldn’t win a set at the Rio Olympics and was instead bounced in the first round by Juan Martin Del Potro on Sunday. While Del Potro is currently No. 145 in the ATP rankings, he’s no stranger to the big lights. In fact, it was Del Potro who defeated Djokovic in the bronze medal match of the London Games in 2012, keeping the Serbian from winning a medal.

  • United States out to dominant start in women's gymnastics

    The United States women’s gymnastics team entered the 2016 Olympics as big favorites, and overachieved in the first day of competition, even by the team’s own lofty standards. Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas earned the top three spots in qualifications on Sunday, and no other country was close to topping USA’s score of 185.238. Biles, Raisman and Douglas were the only three gymnasts to post an all-around score over 60.