Olympics Live Updates: Caeleb Dressel Vies for Medal in Swimming

The American swimmer Caeleb Dressel, 24, has three career relay golds in the Olympics but no individual wins. On Wednesday night he has a chance to change that in the 100-meter freestyle.

NBC Primetime will broadcast the event, which is set to start at 10:37 p.m. Eastern. (Because of the 13-hour time difference, the event takes place on Thursday morning in Japan.)

Dressel started swimming when he was 5, after his parents enrolled him in swim lessons — a decision he did not agree with at first, he said in a video interview on U.S.A. Swimming’s YouTube page.

But Dressel, who is from Green Cove Springs, Fla., eventually became laser-focused on swimming. By his mother’s telling, Dressel’s first “competition” came when he jumped in the pool during one of his siblings’ swim meets, raced his way to the other end and claimed, “I won a medal, I won a medal!”

It was the first unofficial accomplishment in his booming career: Dressel, who swam for the University of Florida, went on to sweep up 15 medals at world championships and set world and U.S. records.

At the 2019 FINA World Championship Games, Dressel broke his first long-course world record in the 100-meter butterfly, posting a time of 49.50 and shattering the previous record of 49.82 set by Michael Phelps.

Dressel made his Olympic debut at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, where he and his team won gold in the men’s 4×100 freestyle and in the 4×100 medley relays. At the Rio Games, Dressel placed sixth in the 100-meter freestyle.

He won his third Olympic gold with Team U.S.A. in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the Tokyo Games on Monday, but he has not yet won an individual Olympic gold.

Dressel, who has a tattoo of the Olympic rings on the inside of his right arm, hopes to change that in the 100-meter freestyle final, where he will face off against competitors from Australia, Italy, Hungary, Romania, South Korea, France and the Russian Olympic Committee.

“As soon as I get behind those blocks, I finally get to do what I was trained to do,” Dressel said in a U.S.A. Swimming video from 2016. “I finally get to be me.”

TOKYO — The women’s gymnastics individual all-around final, expected to be a highlight of the Games, lost a good deal of its luster after the withdrawal of Simone Biles. But the competition on Thursday should be fierce, with two Americans, Sunisa Lee and Jade Carey (who replaces Biles), in the mix for the medals. The event starts at 7:50 p.m. Tokyo time (6:50 a.m. Eastern) and is expected to be carried on the Peacock streaming app.

In swimming, there are five finals on Thursday morning (on Wednesday evening U.S. time). Caeleb Dressel, who has three career relay golds, has a great shot at his first individual win in the men’s 100-meter freestyle. Australia is the big favorite in the women’s 4×200 freestyle relay, and a win would add to its 4×100 gold medal.

The men’s golf tournament also gets underway, with many top players, but not Bryson DeChambeau of the United States and Jon Rahm of Spain, who both tested positive for the coronavirus.

Here are some highlights of U.S. broadcast coverage on Wednesday evening, including medals in three-on-three basketball, the opening match of women’s rugby sevens and lots of swimming.

RUGBY A replay of the bronze and gold medal matches of the men’s rugby seven games will be broadcast at 7 p.m. on NBCSN. At 9 p.m., USA Network will broadcast the U.S. women’s rugby sevens team’s opening match against China.

GOLF The men’s individual stroke play tournament starts at 6:30 p.m. and continues through the evening on the Golf Channel.

GYMNASTICS The men’s individual all-around kicks off NBC’s prime-time coverage, beginning at 8 p.m.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL Also at 8 p.m., USA Network will broadcast a women’s beach volleyball match between Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil of the U.S. and Gaudencia Makokha and Brackcides Khadambi of Kenya. The Americans Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena take on Julian Azaad and Nicolas Capograsso of Argentina in a men’s match at 10 p.m. on USA.

THREE-ON-THREE BASKETBALL In a replay of the sport’s first Olympic gold medal game, Allisha Gray, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young and Stefanie Dolson of the United States take on Russia, starting at 8 p.m. on NBCSN.

FENCING The women’s team foil quarterfinals start at 11 p.m. on CNBC, with the semifinals at 12:55 a.m.

BMX RACING CNBC will air the men’s and women’s quarterfinals at Ariake Urban Sports Park, starting at 10 p.m.

SWIMMING Gold medals are up for grabs tonight, in events including the 100-meter men’s freestyle, in which the American swimmer Caeleb Dressel hopes to win his first individual Olympic medal. Coverage begins at 9:30 p.m. on NBC.

BASKETBALL NBCSN has a replay of the U.S. men’s game against Iran at 11:30 p.m.

WATER POLO The U.S. men face Italy in a Group A game at 1 a.m. on USA Network.

ARCHERY CNBC will cover the elimination rounds of the individual archery competitions starting at midnight.

TOKYO — The biggest news of Wednesday came from beyond the competition floor as it was announced that Simone Biles would not compete in the individual all-around gymnastics competition because of a mental health issue.

Katie Ledecky started her day with a crushingly disappointing fifth-place finish in the 200-meter freestyle. But an hour or so later she got her first gold of the Games in her best event, the 1,500 freestyle. This was the first time women had raced that distance at an Olympics. The British won the 4×200-meter men’s freestyle relay, with the Americans, who led for nearly half the race, fading to fourth.

The United States women captured the first-ever gold medal for three-on-three basketball, defeating Russia, 18-15.

The U.S. men’s five-on-five basketball team bounced back from an opening loss to France with a commanding win over Iran, 120-66.

The U.S. women’s water polo team never loses. And yet it did, to Hungary, 10-9. Both teams will advance to the playoffs, though, and perhaps a rematch looms.

Joy for Fiji, which repeated as champions of the men’s rugby sevens competition. Seven-dollar bills for all!

Primoz Roglic of Slovenia had a disappointing Tour de France but got a measure of consolation with a gold in the cycling time trial. Annemiek van Vleuten of the Netherlands won the women’s event.

Bianca Buitendag, a 27-year-old surfer from South Africa, barely made it to the Tokyo Olympics.

She was set to retire years ago. She had a false-positive coronavirus test just days before departing for Japan. On the final day of competition, she missed not one but two buses to Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach, the Olympic venue.

And yet.

“Every obstacle fuels the fire,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief 24 hours after clinching an Olympic medal.

Buitendag spent a few years on surfing’s championship tour and had her top performance in 2015, finishing ranked fourth. She thought she had given all she had to the sport, but then surfing was added to the Olympic roster in 2016.

“I figured OK, just two more years,” she said. “And then of course that became three.”

The pandemic’s disruption of travel and competitions tested her patience, but also enabled her to train without interruption.

Then there was the close call with the coronavirus. With South Africa gripped by a deadly third wave, Olympic athletes were making their way to Tokyo carrying file folders filled with documentation of their physical well-being.

Two days before her flight to Tokyo, Buitendag’s coronavirus test came back positive. She underwent a full medical examination, submitted blood samples and received two consecutive negative tests. She got on the plane.

Conditions at the Tsurigasaki beach, in Ichinomiya — a nearly two-hour drive from the Olympic Village, across Tokyo Bay and the Boso Peninsula — were not ideal. The first few days the surf was flat as a lake, hardly advantageous, especially for the 6-foot-1 Buitendag.

And unlike some competitors who had entourages of managers, coaches and videographers, Buitendag had one person waiting for her on the beach: her coach, Greg Emslie.

Her underdog spirit flared when she was matched against the Australian Stephanie Gilmore, a seven-time world champion. “I knew for me to have any chance against the most decorated and best female surfer in the world, I would have to be on a pretty quality wave,” Buitendag said. “By a miracle it came.”

She knocked Gilmore out, finishing with a score of 13.93 to Gilmore’s 10.

Buitendag would return to the beach for another day. If the quarterfinals went well, she would be onto the semifinals and the gold-medal heat.

But first she had to catch the bus.

On Monday, Buitendag set her alarm for 3:30 a.m., aiming to make a 4 a.m. bus and arrive at the beach with time to warm up. But she grabbed a cup of coffee and missed the bus. The next scheduled bus didn’t show. She realized she could miss her heat.

Eventually a bus arrived, delivering Buitendag to the quarterfinals in time to face Yolanda Hopkins of Portugal. She advanced.

In the semifinal on Tuesday, she faced Caroline Marks, an American favorite, but it was another win for Buitendag. Finally, she was in the gold-medal heat against the American Carissa Moore — and lost, taking silver.

On Wednesday, Buitendag was still in awe.

“I didn’t have much of an expectation coming into it,” she said, a rainbow at her back. “The occasion was almost too big for me.”

But as it turned out, she was exactly where she needed to be.

The quarantine measures at the Tokyo Games have come under scrutiny in recent days, with members of the Dutch delegation criticizing the restrictions for those who have tested positive for the coronavirus, including not being allowed to go outside.

On Tuesday, Candy Jacobs, a Dutch Olympic skateboarder who tested positive for the virus and is under quarantine, protested with members of the Dutch delegation in the lobby of the hotel where they are isolating. “Not having any outside air is so inhuman,” the 31-year-old Jacobs said in a now-deleted video message on Instagram. “It’s mentally super draining. Definitely more than a lot of humans can handle.”

The athletes remained in the lobby until they reached “a solution about getting fresh air,” Reshmie Oogink, a Dutch taekwondo competitor who tested positive for the virus and participated in the protest, told The New York Times.

In a message, Oogink confirmed that they were now permitted to get 15 minutes of supervised visits to an open window. But because the windows in the athletes’ rooms are sealed shut, they are brought to another room where the windows open. It was unclear whether athletes go to the room individually or together, and who is supervising the visits.

“There is not much freedom here,” Oogink said, adding that otherwise athletes can leave their rooms only to get food.

Oogink has passed the time by competing in her hotel room in what she calls the Covid Games. For these Olympic “events,” she turns garbage bags into basketball hoops and uses miniature Dutch wooden shoes as a basketball — ensuring there is a Covid-safe distance of one-and-a-half meters (about 5 feet) between her and the basket.

“Being creative kills time during the day,” she said.

Oogink, 31, who participated in the 2016 Rio Games, came back from three A.C.L. injuries to qualify for another Olympics. But because of positive tests, Oogink and her Dutch teammate Jacobs missed their competitions.

“My dream has been shattered,” she said.

Oogink tested positive on July 21 and went into quarantine the next day. She was not experiencing any symptoms and felt OK, she said, adding that the situation has had “more impact on the mind.” She did not have to undergo any tests for her first five days in quarantine, and said that those who produce a negative sample using a P.C.R. test on Day 6 and again on Day 7 can be released from quarantine.

According to the Olympic playbooks, athletes with positive P.C.R. tests are to be isolated at designated facilities, though the location and length of isolation vary depending on the severity of the case. Japan’s health authorities require a 10-day quarantine at facilities outside the Olympic Village, and multiple negative P.C.R. tests before discharge, an I.O.C. official said in an email.

A total of 20 athletes are confirmed to have tested positive so far since arriving in Tokyo. But so far, the Games have not resulted in the spike in cases that many feared.

But the situation looks different outside the Olympic Village. Tokyo officials on Wednesday reported 3,177 new coronavirus cases, the city’s highest daily total recorded to date. Tokyo is under its fourth state of emergency, with bars and restaurants closing early and sales of alcohol tightly restricted. Experts attribute the rise in cases to the highly contagious Delta variant and say that the current measures might not be strong enough to contain its spread.

Xander Schauffele always watched the Summer Olympics growing up. He had no choice. His father, Stefan, is a former Olympic hopeful for Germany in the decathlon.

“My dad loved to watch the track and field,” Schauffele said.

Stefan’s Olympic aspirations ended nearly 40 years ago when his car was struck by a drunken driver and a piece of windshield lodged in Stefan’s left eye, leaving him blind. Stefan was 20.

“His dream was swiped from him,” Xander Schauffele, who is fifth in the men’s world golf rankings, said in an interview last week. “As a young golfer, I could relate to a situation where something you’ve worked at for so many years is taken away. It was tragic.”

When golf returned as an Olympic sport in 2016 after a 112-year absence, Schauffele, who had just joined the PGA Tour, suddenly had a new goal beyond his hopes for major titles. Qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics would be a chance to fulfill a family ambition.

Or as Stefan, who has been his son’s lifelong swing coach, said last week: “Sort of like a full circle of my own dream.”

In Japan on Thursday (Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time), Schauffele will tee off for the United States in the first round of the men’s Olympic golf competition. Because of protocols established to stage the Games amid a pandemic, he was allowed to bring only one person with him from his native San Diego to the Olympics. Stefan made the trip to Japan.

That decision may have seemed obvious, but for the Schauffeles there were other considerations. Xander’s mother, Ping-Yi Chen, who met Stefan when both were San Diego college students, was born in Taiwan but was raised in Japan and has nearly 100 relatives living in the Tokyo area.

Schauffele will be one of four Americans at the Olympic golf competition and a favorite to win a gold medal at the Kasumigaseki Country Club, about 23 miles north of Tokyo, given his track record in major championships.

Stefan equated a victory at the Olympics with winning one of the four majors in professional men’s golf.

“It is not a fifth major,” Stefan said, “but it is as important as a major.”

Xander Schauffele did not disagree.

KASHIMA CITY, Japan — For a few days, some Olympic soccer players have been treated to the rarest of privileges at the Tokyo Games: spectators.

While fans have been barred from the vast majority of venues as one of the measures to contain coronavirus infections, three host prefectures are still allowing a limited number of spectators at Olympic venues.

Over the last week, the bulk of the fans at Kashima Soccer Stadium, about 70 miles northeast of the Olympic Stadium in Ibaraki Prefecture, were schoolchildren, dressed identically in their summer uniforms and sitting two seats apart.

The stadium was by no means full: no more than 1,200 schoolchildren, chaperoned by teachers and school officials, were allowed into a venue that has a capacity of more than 40,000. Wearing face masks, the children were instructed that they could clap but never cheer out loud.

Of course, enthusiasm sometimes overtook them. At the match between the United States and Australia, played on Tuesday beneath muggy skies, the children mostly followed the rules and kept quiet. But when Alex Morgan, a forward for the U.S., sent a ball into the goal, a few shouts erupted. (The goal was nullified by an offside ruling, and the game ended in a 0-0 tie.)

Plans to bring in children as spectators predated the pandemic, and originally, many more students were to attend the Games. Close to 10,000 students from 53 schools in the prefecture originally applied for the student tickets. But after the Games were postponed by a year, many parents withdrew their children. Only about 3,400 students attended the soccer matches over three days.

Some parents decided the opportunity was simply too good to pass up. “The Olympics are very special,” said Hiroyuki Onuma, principal of Kashima Fuzoku Junior High, who accompanied 60 students to the stadium on Tuesday. “This probably will be the first and the last chance for these children. It will be a wonderful memory for them.”

Honoka Kikuta, 12, said she felt bad that more spectators were unable to attend. “I think seeing a game in person is very special,” said Honoka, who brought an American flag to cheer on the U.S. team. With the relative silence in the stadium, she could hear the players’ chatter on the field, although she did not understand the English words.

Go Saito, 14, said it had been more than a year since he set foot inside the stadium, where a local team, the Kashima Antlers, regularly plays. “Some of my friends didn’t come as they were worried about infections,” he said. “I’m not worried. We are doing well in the prevention measures. And the Olympics are very special, and may or may not happen here only once in my life.”

For the athletes, the presence of somebody — anybody — in the stands was a blessing.

“It was wonderful to have some fans, to have somebody in the stands, clapping, cheering a little bit,” Morgan said after the match on Tuesday. “It’s challenging to play in front of an empty stadium. So it was a nice surprise for us.”

Israel is set to play its first-ever Olympic baseball game on Thursday, against the defending champion, South Korea.

The outcome of the game (11 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday) might seem foretold. Israel is ranked last among the six teams playing in the Tokyo Games, and in Beijing in 2008 — the last time baseball was played in the Olympics — South Korea beat Cuba, 3-2, for a gold medal.

This year, South Korea is fielding a young team seen as likely to medal.

On Friday in Tokyo, Israel faces the U.S., whose team is unable to field major league players because they are in midseason. And there are formidable teams in the later elimination rounds: the Dominican Republic, a medal possibility; Mexico, another medal possibility; and Japan, which is heavily favored for the gold.

Israel’s team has only four players native to the country. The rest are mostly American players whose Jewish roots allowed them to obtain citizenship in Israel.

The team’s star is Ian Kinsler, 39, a second baseman and four-time major league All-Star. He announced his retirement from the majors in early 2020 and traveled to Israel to gain citizenship that March, just before Israel locked down to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The team is also fielding some current minor league players, and some amateurs. The team’s veteran pitcher works in Manhattan as head of programming for City Winery, a wine, food and music space. Another pitcher is an investment analyst with Goldman Sachs.

Team Israel was formed in the 1990s but rarely had much success until recently. Four years ago, the team was ranked 48th in the world, but in a stunning turn, it qualified for the World Baseball Classic, making it into the tournament’s second round. In 2019, the Israeli team continued its surprising run by qualifying for the Olympics.

“We joke that we’re a combination of the Bad News Bears and the Jamaican bobsledding team,” the team’s trainer, Barry Weinberg, said during the team’s recent visit to New York City. Mr. Weinberg served stints as a trainer for the New York Yankees, the Oakland A’s and the St. Louis Cardinals, and has earned seven World Series rings.