Summer Olympics, Day 6: Team USA Delivers A Memorable Thursday

After playing an integral part in the U.S. winning gold in the women’s team gymnastics competition on Tuesday, Gabby Douglas once again put on a show on Thursday to win the gold in the women’s individual all-around. She is the third-straight American woman to win the event, coming on the heels of Carly Patterson in 2004 and Nastia Liukin in 2008. It’s just the second time any country has pulled off a three-peat.

It was an incredible performance by Douglas, who led after every rotation to best Russia’s Viktoria Komova and Aliya Mustafina with a total of 62.232 points. Komova needed to score a 15.360 on the floor exercise, her final rotation, but came up short with a 15.100.

With a dominant win in the men’s 200 IM on Thursday, Michael Phelps became the first men’s swimmer to win an individual gold medal in a single event in three consecutive Olympics, and likely ended for good any discussion about whether he or Ryan Lochte is the star of London.

Phelps led after the first 50 meters of butterfly, but Lochte was a mere .16 seconds back, and in position to make up ground on the backstroke, his specialty. Lochte didn’t, though, falling back and falling further behind Phelps and Thiago Pereira of Brazil in the breaststroke.

Great Britain continued its dominance of track cycling, winning gold in the men’s team sprint. The British team of Philip Hindes, Chris Hoy, and Jason Kenny set the world record in their gold medal victory over France with a time of 42.600 seconds, breaking the world record they had just set in the first round and giving credence to the talk that the London Velodrome track is fastest in the world. The Germany team beat Australia in the race for the bronze medal.

In the first ever Olympic running of the women’s team sprint, the German team of Kristina Vogel and Miriam Welte pulled off a surprise gold when the Chinese team was disqualified in the gold medal final. The Chinese team set a world record in the first round with a time of 32.422 seconds, breaking the world record they set in qualifying. The favored British team was disqualified in the first round after finishing right behind the Chinese in qualification. Both teams were disqualified for illegal change-overs, the Chinese still finished with the silver, but the Brits were left out of the medals. Australia topped Ukraine in the bronze medal race.

China won the gold and silver medal in men’s singles tennis to take back the lead in the overall medal count at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The United States won two gold medals to briefly take back the lead, 31-30, on Thursday, but Ji Ke Zhang’s 4-1 win over Hao Wang in an All-China has put the Chinese back in control.

Team USA was able to move tick closer in the gold medal count, however, notching two wins to one for China. The women’s rowing eight continued its dominance in the event, winning its second consecutive gold medal at the Olympics. Kayla Harrison’s win in the women’s judo 78kg gold medal match was much more surprising. The United States had never won a judo event in its Olympics history until Harrison took out Great Britain’s Gemma Gibbons on Thursday.

The top two players in the world right now, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, secured their place in the semifinals on Thursday.

Federer beat American John Isner 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) in his quest to add the only accomplishment missing from his resume, Olympic singles gold medalist. Isner put up a fight, but per usual could not mount enough of an attack in his return games. Federer has never made it to the semifinals before; he lost in the quarterfinals to another American, James Blake, at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and in the second round in 2004. Fed will take on Argentina’s Juan Martin Del Potro who topped Kei Nishikori of Japan 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) in his quarterfinal.

Great Britain’s Peter Wilson won gold in the men’s double trap shooting event by two shots over Sweden’s Hakan Dahlby. After Britain’s poor shooting performance in 2008, UK Sport cut all of Wilson’s funding, but his parents funded his training until he could raise enough money through fundraising events. Russia’s Vasily Mosin took the bronze after beating Kuwait’s Fehaid Aldeehani in a shoot off.

Russia may have only taken bronze in shooting, but with Vladimir Putin looking on, Russian Tagir Khaibulaev took home the gold medal in men’s half-heavyweight (100 kg) judo after defeating Mongolia’s Tuvshinbayar Naidan by ippon. Germany’s Dimitri Peters claimed one bronze medal and Henk Grol of the Netherlands won the other bronze medal match.

Having never medaled in men’s C-2 (canoeing doubles slalom) before Thursday, Great Britain has now won two medals as they captured both the gold and the silver in a big upset.

The team of Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott won the gold with a time of 106.41 seconds narrowly beating out their countrymen David Florence and Richard Hounslow by 0.36 seconds. Florence won silver in the singles canoe slalom at Beijing before switching over the doubles.

This may be one of the few times an athlete can legitimately say “I gave 110 percent” or any other mathematically impossible number in reference to their effort. It is legit because in order to give more than 100 percent, you have to borrow from somewhere else. When you borrow something, you have to pay it back. Paying it back is never, ever fun.

What we’re saying is that South Korean weightlifter Sa Jae-Hyouk definitely gave 100 percent in trying to snatch 357 pounds in the 2012 London Olympics. Then, he borrowed 10 percent or so from his right elbow. And then, if you are not squeamish, his elbow took back that 10 percent plus interest in a GIF you can watch after the jump.

You may have expected that Serena Williams would have to work a little harder than she had up to this point when facing Denmark’s Caroline Wozniaki in the quarterfinals on Thursday; you could not be more wrong. Serena crushed the former world number one 6-0, 6-3 and will advance to the semifinals.

Williams continued her dominance at Wimbledon as she didn’t face a single break point during the match and barely broke a sweat. Serena put up 30 winners to Wozniaki’s seven, and in the first set Wozniaki only managed one single winner.

Kayla Harrison became the first American woman ever to advance to the gold medal match in judo at the Summer Olympics after pulling off an upset over Brazil’s Mayra Aguiar, the No. 1-ranked judoka in the world, Thursday. The final for the women’s judo -78 kg final is set for 11:00 a.m. ET, where Harrison will take on Great Britain’s Gemma Gibbons, who defeated France’s Audrey Tcheumeo in the other semifinal.

Harrison won after scoring an ippon with 14 seconds left in the bout, automatically giving her the win. She scored a yuko at the 3:56 mark that would have proved decisive on its own. Aguiar was held scoreless throughout the match.

Andy Murray is two wins away from doing what he couldn’t a few weeks ago: win the finals of a tournament at Wimbledon.

Murray faced up against Spain’s Nicolas Almagro, the tournament’s 11th seed, and advanced easily behind the strength of absolutely brutal serving: Murray served 15 aces to Almagro’s one and scored on a ridiculous 28 out of 30 points on first serve. He won 6-4 in the first set and broke Almagro three times in the second for the 6-4 6-1 victory. He’ll face the winner of the matchup between Novak Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Day 6 at the 2012 Summer Olympic could be yet another banner day for Team USA in London, both in the pool and in the gym.

Just two days after winning gold in the team competition, Americans Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman will go for gold in the women’s individual all-around. The U.S. has taken home the gold in this competition in the past two Olympics -- will Gabby or Aly be able to add their name alongside Nastia, Carly and Mary Lou?

A heavily favored United States boat earned a relatively easy victory in the women’s eight rowing competition -- it’s the Americans’ second consecutive gold, and comes after additional wins at both the 2006 and 2010 World Championships.

The American boat never really seemed in danger of losing gold: by 1,000 meters into the 2,000-meter race, their boat was well over half a boat-length ahead of any competition, and coasted easily to the win.

The sixth day of the 2012 London Olympics is a day for the men’s basketball and swimming fans.

And also the small pocket of dressage equestrian fans.