Rio Olympics Day 2: drama, history, crashes and upsets – and China finally get some gold
China’s gold medal machine continues to churn with top marks for history-making Wu Minxia, while American phenom Michael Phelps earns his 19th gold and there were upsets in tennis and a horrifying crash in the women’s cycling road race
Four of China’s reigning Olympic champions were dethroned on day one and early on day two at the Rio Olympics. Wu Minxia made sure she wasn’t going to be number five – though that was the number she had in mind as China finally got on the gold trail.
Wu became the first woman ever to win five diving Olympic golds after she and partner Shi Tingmao took the 3m synchronised springboard. It’s the first of what China hope will be a sweep of the diving medals.
WATCH: Golden moments on Day 2 at Rio Olympics
“I thought about giving up before these Olympic Games because I got injured for a month and I thought it would take a lot of time to recover. It’s really hard to maintain my best performance,” said Wu, who is not competing in other categories and will probably retire.
She – and everyone else on the planet – is still some way behind Michael Phelps, who won his 19th Olympic gold medal by anchoring the US 4x100m freestyle relay team to victory on his return to the Olympic pool from a brief retirement. The greatest Olympian of all time showed little ring rust as he won his 23rd career Games medal.
