2012 Olympics: Ryan Lochte Beats Michael Phelps; USWNT Cruises

The U.S. women’s national team’s 3-0 win over Colombia on Saturday turned out to not be that competitive on the field. But was it scrappy? Absolutely. How else would one describe a match in which powerful American forward Abby Wambach was felled by a cheap shot punch to the face?

If that looks ugly, it should: Wambach told Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl that the punch by Colombia’s Lady Andrade was the first sucker punch she’d ever taken, and she crumpled to the ground and stayed down for almost a minute, with the area around her eye obviously in rough shape. She expressed her displeasure with the play after the match, calling it “dangerous” and asking for a FIFA review.

The first of 15 weightlifting gold medals to be awarded at the 2012 London Olympics went to China’s Wang Mingjuan Saturday.

Wang won the women’s 48kg competition Saturday morning, lifting a combined 205 kg (about 452 pounds) between the clean and jerk and snatch to take her third straight gold medal in the event. In fact, Wang hasn’t lost in international competition since 2002, but didn’t participate in the Olympics in either 2004 or 2008.

The first full day of tennis is in the books at the 2012 Olympics in London. The tournament is being held on the storied courts at Wimbledon, although the participants are being allowed to forgo the traditional “all-white” dress requirements in order to have easily-identifiable national pride.

Only one of three American men in singles competition were victorious on Saturday’s Day 1. John Isner defeated Olivier Rochus of Belgium in straight sets, 7-6, 6-4. Ryan Harrison and Donald Young were not so lucky. In other men’s singles action on Day 1, Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro also advanced.

The United States set an American record in the women’s 4x100 meter freestyle relay, perhaps justifying the team’s decision to drop Natalie Coughlin from the relay, but that was not good enough for a gold medal. In an extremely close race, Australia captured the gold medal in Olympic Record time.

Australia won the race in 3:33.15. The Netherlands won silver and finished less than one second behind in 3:33.79. The United States captured a medal comfortably, beating fourth-place China by more than two seconds, but they were more than a second behind the Aussies with 3:34.24.

Its economy’s not the greatest, but when it comes to women handling long, bendy swords, Italy has the world beat, at least in 2012. Elisa Di Francisco scored a point to the body against fellow Italian Arianna Errigo in overtime of their gold medal match, ensuring she’d be atop the podium next to her teammate. In the bronze medal faceoff, Italy’s Valentina Vezzali beat South Korean Hyun Hee Nam for the bronze medal, also by scoring a point in overtime.

Because we’re SB Nation, here’s a .gif of Di Francisco’s winning thrust, courtesy of @BuzzFeedSports:

Does this make Solo look petty? Sure. Is a distraction? Doubtful. Is it kinda hilarious? Definitely.

That Solo waited until the game had been over for about 30 minutes before taking her issues public only serves to make the whole situation seem even more ridiculous. Considering this happened so close to the end of the game, it seems a bit unlikely that Solo really had a chance to hear the comments herself.

Even casual Olympics fans recognized Saturday’s duel between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in the men’s 400m IM as one of the 2012 Olympics’ signature events. And NBC holding the live broadcast of the race off television until primetime made some sense.

But NBC also made some fans using its live stream online and via an app fairly upset, too.

The United States women are through to the quarterfinals of the London 2012 Olympics women’s soccer tournament, and will only need a draw in their final match of the group stage to win their group. It took them until late in the first half to score their first goal, but they were comfortably in command for the entirety of their 3-0 victory over Colombia.

The game was a rematch of a World Cup group stage match from last year, which the United States won by the same score. It played out in very similar fashion, and even featured two of the same goal scorers. Rapinoe opened the scoring in the 33rd minute, curling an excellent shot over the outstretched hand of Colombian goalkeeper Sandra Sepulveda from 20 yards out. Sepulveda is just 5’5”, and it appeared that a taller goalkeeper would have been able to make the save.

The highlight on Day 1 of the 2012 Summer Olympics, and indeed one of must-see events of the entire Games, is the men’s 400m IM finals, the first of two (expected) duels between Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps. The event is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. London time, which is 2:30 p.m. ET, but if you’re looking to actually see this must-see showdown, don’t look on your TV. At least, not if you want to watch it live.

NBC is tape-delaying much of the swimming, including the 400m IM finals, for primetime Saturday night, beginning at 8 p.m. ET (West Coast, expect to get it some time next week). But all is not lost!

The United States Men’s Archery Team scored a major upset in the semifinals of the Olympics against reigning gold medal winner South Korea, but came up just short in the gold medal round against heavily favored Italy, losing by one point and settling for silver.

Team USA trailed big early, down four points to Italy after End 2, but reclaimed two points in End 3, and in the fourth and final end, but Jake Kaminski fired a devastating 8, before teammate Jacob Wukie shot a 10 and world No. 1 Brady Ellington fired a 9. Ellington could have sealed the deal for the U.S. had he lived up to his top ranking, but he fired 8s and 9s all during the round and couldn’t get it in the bullseye.

After a slow start and an underwhelming first half, Team USA did what it has done in its last four Olympics appearances in women’s basketball: dominate. The U.S. used a massive fourth quarter to pull away for an 81-56 win over Croatia in its opening game on Saturday.

Tina Charles led the U.S. with 14 points, and the Americans used a 28-9 fourth quarter to finally put away a feisty Croatian team that trailed by just three points at halftime.

The first South Korean swimmer in history to win Olympic gold, Park Tae-Hwan was disqualified from defending his 400-meter freestyle crown Saturday morning, but he won his appeal and has been reinstated to swim Saturday night. The bizarre turn of events left Canadian Ryan Cochrane, who had been bumped into the finals with Park’s disqualification, out of the event. Park was disqualified for leaving his block a little early, but here’s Reuters’ explanation of the overturn:

Park was disqualified in his Olympic debut in Athens in 2004 for the same mistake, Reuters said. According to NBC’s Andrea Kremer, Canada has filed a protest of the decision on Cochrane’s behalf.

The U.S. women’s national soccer team expected a smoother ride against Colombia than France in group play at the 2012 Olympics. In one sense, it has been, with the Americans up 1-0 after a brilliant goal by Megan Rapinoe. But Abby Wambach’s rougher half may balance it out.

Rapinoe fired a brilliant strike from just outside the box in the 33rd minute on a feed from Alex Morgan to produce the only goal of the first half, then pulled a birthday message to former national team player Ali Krieger out of her sock and displayed it.

With a few events coming final on the first day of the 2012 Olympics, Russian Judoka Arsen Galsyan was able to take home the gold medal in men’s 60 kg judo. Galsyan defeated Uzbekistan’s Rishod Sobirov to move on to the gold medal round, landing a Yoko-guruma in the match. Galstyan defeated Korea’s Choi Gwang-Hyeon on his way to the semi-final round.

Japan’s Hiroaki Hiraoka was able to take the silver medal, adding to Japan’s total Judo medal dominance. Hiraoka lost to Galstyan in the finals, as the Russian Judoka was able to get an Ippon (Soto-makikomi) 41 seconds into the match.

Jin Jong-oh took silver medals in the men’s 10m and 50m air pistol competitions at the 2008 Summer Olympics. In London, he’s already aimed higher — and hit his target.

Jin won the gold medal in the men’s 10m air pistol on Saturday morning in London, holding off Italian Luca Tesconi to hold on to his first gold medal. Jin, the world-record holder in qualification for the event, qualified first for the final, and built a sizable lead midway through the final. But it wasn’t until he notched a 10.8 in his final effort of the final, relegating Tesconi to silver after the Italian had cut Jin’s lead to 1.8 points.

After an exhilarating 4-2 comeback victory against France in their first game at the 2012 London Olympics, U.S. Women’s National Team could be forgiven for wanting a less-exciting follow-up. That may well be possible against Colombia.

The USWNT will be the heavy favorite over Colombia, which did not start its first game against North Korea on Wednesday on time, thanks to a flag flap. But that North Korean team thumped the Colombians, 2-0, and Colombia didn’t win a single match in the 2011 Women’s World Cup.

With the 2012 Summer Olympics underway on Day 1, American swimmer Michael Phelps avoided a near massive disaster in the Men’s 400-meter IM qualifying early Saturday morning. Ryan Lochte, Phelps’ fellow American multi-gold contender in the pool, finished third in qualifying, but Phelps almost missed being in the field for the final.

Phelps finished the qualifying in eighth place, just .08 seconds faster than the ninth-place swimmer and the cut line. If Phelps had failed to qualify, it would have been one of the most shocking Olympic moments of his career.

Yi Siling of China is the winner of the first gold medal of the London 2012 Olympics, having captured victory in the women’s 10-meter air rifle final. China won the most medals in shooting of any country at the 2008 Olympics, but did not have a medalist in the women’s 10-meter air rifle. This is Siling’s first Olympic games.

Siling did not have a score below a 10 and captured the gold before her opponents shot in the final round. Sylvia Bogacka of Poland took the silver medal, while Yu Dan of China captured bronze. Katerina Emmons of the Czech Republic, who set an olympic record with her gold-medal performance at the 2008 Olympics, came up just short of a medal in fourth place.

With the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony over and done with, we can now get to the actual events in the Summer Games. The games get started as early as 4 a.m. ET and will last until as late as midnight. The day gets kicked off with some Beach Volleyball qualifying.

The day will also feature some key evens like swimming qualifying (11 a.m. ET on NBC) and the first round of tennis matches which well be shown on Bravo.