U.S. Men Rout China, Williams Sisters Lose

By ESPN

Kevin Durant looks ready to lead a new group of Americans to the gold-medal podium.

Durant picked up right where he left off in the 2012 Olympics with 25 points, and the U.S. men's basketball team routed China 119-62 on Saturday night in its opening game.

The new Golden State Warriors star scored 30 points four years ago in the gold-medal game, when the Americans held off Spain for the championship. Only he and Carmelo Anthony returned from that team, but the new guys were plenty ready for their Olympic moment.

"We just wanted to send a statement to the rest of the world," Anthony said. "Come out this first game and let everybody know that we're focused, we're locked in and we're about business on this trip."

DeMarcus Cousins added 17 points and Paul George 15 for the U.S., which is a heavy favorite to win a third straight gold and won't change any opinions after this performance.

LeBron James and Chris Paul passed on searching for more gold with Durant and Anthony, and plenty more top players who would have been on this roster also declined. But coach Mike Krzyzewski said this squad has already bonded as much as any of the three U.S. teams he has led in the Olympics.

Williams Sisters Lose in Doubles

Serena and Venus Williams never had lost an Olympic doubles match until Sunday night, going 15-0 and earning three gold medals together.

Their first-round opponents at the Rio de Janeiro Games, the Czech Republic's Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova, never had won any sort of match as a pair, at any event. And they had zero wins between them in Olympic doubles competition, going a combined 0-3 with other partners.

So it was rather stunning, to say the least, when the Williams sisters were beaten 6-3, 6-4 by Safarova and Strycova in the first round in Rio.

"We played terrible," Serena said, "and it showed in the results."

The American duo was seeded No. 1 and coming off a 14th Grand Slam championship together at Wimbledon a month ago. The Czechs, meanwhile, are unseeded.

And get this: They weren't even supposed to be playing together at the Olympics. Strycova was a late replacement for Karolina Pliskova, who withdrew from the tournament. Indeed, Strycova and Safarova only had played one match as a team before Sunday -- and they lost that, in a Fed Cup match last year.

"That's true, but we are really good friends. We know each other's games," said Strycova, never better than a doubles semifinalist at a Grand Slam tournament. "I know what I have to do on the court, and she knows what she has to do."

Safarova is a strong doubles player, and she won two major titles in 2015 with Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the United States.

When the Czechs found out who they'd be facing to start things off in Brazil, Safarova said their reaction was: "The draw could be better." And then she and Strycova started laughing.

"But it was a challenge," Safarova continued, "and we love challenges. We had nothing to lose. We stepped out there today and played a great game and deserved to win."

Ledecky Keeps Posting Large Margins of Victory

Leah Smith trains with 19-year-old American swimming sensation Katie Ledecky at the Nation's Capital Swim Club in Bethesda, Maryland, so she knows what to expect when she and Ledecky go racing. But it has to help, too, that Smith has a grounded sense of humor about the freakishly large margins of victory that Ledecky keeps posting -- as Ledecky did again in their 400-meter freestyle final Sunday night at the Rio Summer Olympics.

When Ledecky was still a blistering 1.19 seconds under her own world record at the halfway point of the race, Smith said she wasn't tempted to steal a look because the roar of crowd seemed to grow louder with every lap. And Smith knew it could only mean one thing.

"When she does that, part of you is in awe and part of you is trying like crazy to catch up to her," Smith said of Ledecky with a laugh. "I knew she was going to win. ... But when I saw her take off with 150 meters to go, I knew she was onto something special. It's kind of fun because you hear the crowd going insane and you try to pretend it's for you, even though you know it's for Katie."

Ledecky shattered her previous world mark in the 400 free by 1.91 seconds, finishing Sunday's final in 3:56.46 -- a time threshold that meant a lot for her because she had been chasing it (not just her previous world record of 3:58.37) for a couple of years now. Bruce Gemmel, the coach who has helped build her astonishing range at distances from the 100 to 1,500 meters, hung 3:56 out there for her a while ago, and it was one of the few things Ledecky hasn't done.

British silver medalist Jazz Carlin finished 4.77 seconds behind Ledecky in 4:01.23, and Smith took the bronze in 4:01.92.

Crashes Occur in Cycling

Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten suffered three small fractures to her spine and will remain hospitalized in intensive care after crashing Sunday during the women's Olympic road race.

Van Vleuten was leading on the fast, slippery descent of Vista Chinesa when she appeared to lock up her brakes on the final corner. She tumbled onto the road and her bike went flying, and she remained on the edge of the pavement as the rest of the field swept past.

Teammate Anna van der Breggen went on to win the gold medal.

The Dutch team said van Vleuten was conscious when she was loaded into an ambulance, and Chef de Mission Maurits Hendriks and team doctors said she was stable and speaking Sunday night.

It was not known when she would be released.

"It was horrendous crash," road race silver medalist Emma Johansson of Sweden said. "The peloton is so small and we all know each other very well. I just hope she's OK."

The road course of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics caused havoc to the men's field on Saturday, too.

Giro d' Italia winner Vincenzo Nibali and Colombian climber Sergio Henao were leading on the same final descent when they crashed. Geraint Thomas of Britain, Richie Porte of Australia and Nelson Oliviera of Portugal were involved in three other hard wrecks.