The rowers defeat the USA in the final sprint, tennis player Anna-Lena Friedsam wins, fencer Max Hartung also progresses. The news from the night.
Rowing: Led by the direct entry into the final of the Germany eight, the German rowers convinced on their second day of competition at the Olympic Games. The parade boat of the German Rowing Association passed the long leading US rowers on Saturday in the last few meters of the run on the Sea Forest Waterway in again stifling heat and high humidity and secured first place. The eighth is next to single driver Oliver Zeidler the DRV’s greatest gold hope in Tokyo.
The lightweight double scull with Jonathan Rommelmann and Jason Osborne also underpinned his reputation as a candidate for a medal with a convincing victory in the preliminary run. The boat qualified for the Olympic semifinals on Saturday with a lead of 2.54 seconds over the runner-up world champions from Italy and was already 22.38 seconds ahead of the third-placed Portuguese. “That gives us confidence, of course, and underpins our claim that we want to compete for the medals here in the end,” said Rommelmann.
The two German double sculls, which were still disappointing on Friday, also reached the semi-finals via the detour of hope run. Leonie Menzel and Annekatrin Thiele came in second, Marc Weber and Stephan Krüger even won their race and also left the runner-up world champions from Ireland behind them.
Tennis: Anna-Lena Friedsam was the first German to make it into the second round in the individual competition of the Tokyo Olympic tennis tournament. In her Olympic debut on Saturday, the 27-year-old from Andernach beat Briton Heather Watson 7: 6 (7: 5), 6: 3. In the second round, the successor meets the favored Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Mona Barthel from Neumünster had previously said goodbye to the competition at the start. On Sunday, Laura Siegemund from Metzingen will still play her first round game, but will face a very difficult task against fourth-placed Ukrainian Jelina Switolina. All three German tennis women are clear underdogs in the Olympic tennis tournament. Angelique Kerber, who won silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, canceled her participation due to an injury.
Fencing: Saber fencer Max Hartung has reached the round of 16 at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. The 31-year-old won his opening duel with the Hungarian Tamas Decsi in the Makuhari exhibition hall B on Saturday with 15: 8. Up to the score of 8: 6, the battle against the seven-year-old veteran was still fairly even, then Hartung pulled away – and advanced to the next round. Decsi also injured his left hand slightly in the course of the fight and had to be treated briefly. Hartung’s team-mate Benedikt Wagner, on the other hand, was unlucky enough to be eliminated in the sixteenth-finals. Against the Russian Kamil Ibragimow he was already 7:12 behind, fought his way back up and took the lead with 13:12, but ultimately lost with 13:15.