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2024 Olympics highlights from Day 1: Wembanyama off to a hot start

Medal table | Olympic schedule | Olympic news

The Olympics are off and running, and the United States has already won its first gold medal.

The Paris Games kicked off on Saturday after the wet and wild Opening Ceremony down the Seine River on Friday night. From the first medals being handed out to a ridiculous celebrity-politician crossover you didn’t know you needed, here are the top five stories from Saturday in Paris:

Thanks to Caeleb Dressel and Team USA, the Americans have won their first gold medal this summer.

Dressel, Chris Guiliano, Jack Alexy and Hunter Armstrong won the men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay in Paris on Saturday to mark the first gold medal for the United States so far in these Games. The team finished with a time of 3:09.28, just ahead of Australia and Italy.

The medal marked Dressel’s eighth Olympic gold.

Snoop Dogg was in the Paris La DĂ©fense Arena and was seen cheering on the team with Dressel’s wife and baby.

Australia’s Ariarne Titmus rolled over American star Katie Ledecky in the first high-profile swimming showdown of the 2024 Games.

Titmus won the gold medal in the women’s 400-meter freestyle final with a time of 3:57.49. She led just about the entire way, and held a huge lead over Ledecky down the stretch. Canada’s Summer McIntosh won silver in the event nearly a full second behind Titmus, and Ledecky came in third at 4:00.86 to grab her first medal in Paris.

The three-way duel had been dubbed as the “Race of the Century.” Even though it finished as expected, it lived up to the hype.

Titmus is favored to win the 200-meter freestyle on Monday, though Ledecky is the favorite in both the 800-meter freestyle and 1,500-meter freestyle. While she didn’t win gold on Saturday, she can still become the most decorated female U.S. Olympian ever this summer.

Victor Wembanyama’s Olympic debut got off to the perfect start on Saturday.

Wembanyama dropped 19 points to lead France past Brazil 78-66 in their first game of the Olympics. The NBA’s Rookie of the Year threw down several huge dunks in the win and had little issue dominating the Brazilians inside.

Wembanyama and France will take on Japan on Tuesday.

Though he got his win, Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo slipped in his first Olympics outing. Antetokounmpo and Greece fell 86-79 to Canada in their Group A game on Saturday night. Antetokounmpo had 34 points and five rebounds in the loss. R.J. Barrett and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander combined for 44 points for Canada in the win.

Elsewhere, Australia beat Spain behind a 20-point outing from Jock Landale. Germany beat Japan by 20 points after a dominant performance from Franz Wagner in their Group B game.

In their first competition together as doubles partners, the Spanish duo of Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz picked up a huge opening win in Paris on Saturday.

Nadal and Alcaraz rallied out of a 3-0 hole in the second set to beat the Argentine pair of Andrés Molteni and Maximo Gonzalez and advance into the second round.

This marks the first Games for Alcaraz, who is the top-ranked player in the world and is coming off titles at Wimbledon and the French Open already this summer. Nadal has won two gold medals in his career, first in singles in Beijing in 2008 and again in doubles in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

The first gold medal of the entire Games went to a pair of Chinese teenagers on Saturday.

Huang Yuting, 17, and Sheng Lihao, 19, beat South Korea’s Hajun Park and Jihyeon Keum 16-12 to win the 10-meter air rifle mixed team gold medal in Paris. Yuting and Lihao have dominated the sport in recent years, and rolled to a 16-2 win in the title match at last year’s world championships. A Kazakhstan duo beat Germany in the bronze medal match to reach the podium.

While Americans Mary Carolyn Tucker and Lucas Kozeniesky won the silver medal in the event in Tokyo, neither of the two U.S. teams performed well on Saturday. Tucker and Rylan William Kissell finished in 13th, and Ivan Roe and Sagen Maddalena finished in 18th.

Yes, this actually happened on Saturday.

Jill Biden, the First Lady of the United States, was watching the U.S. women’s water polo team’s win over Greece on Saturday in France. Flav, despite not having a prior connection to the team, recently partnered up to support them.

The 65-year-old rapper and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee was rocking a custom Flav jersey and a water polo cap in the stands. Then, near the end of the match, the Flav-FLOTUS crossover event went down. And it was as incredible as you could imagine.

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