Paris Olympics Day 3 recap: Monday’s best moments

PARIS, France — The Paris Olympics are officially in full swing and drama isn’t far behind.

Along with the intense competition viewers have come to expect from the Games, Monday also included a historic volleyball rematch, a humiliating water polo loss, and an ongoing fencing investigation. 

Here’s everything you need to know from the Olympics’ Day 3:

Canadian phenom Summer McIntosh has claimed the first gold medal of her career with a dominating victory in the 400-meter individual medley at the Paris Olympics. The Americas went 2-3 with Katie Grimes taking silver and Emma Weyant the bronze. 

Yuto Horigome of Japan successfully defended his Olympic gold medal in Paris after a gnarly final in which he earned the highest single-trick score. Americans Jagger Eaton and Nyjah Huston win silver and bronze.

Japan surged past its longtime rival China to win gold in the Paris Olympics men’s gymnastics competition, and the Americans earned bronze for their first medal since 2008.

It was Japan’s eighth team gold and first since Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The Japanese overtook its rivals on the final rotation, after China’s Su Weide fell twice off the horizontal bar. Japan won with a small margin of 0.532 points.

Former NBA player Chase Budinger and his partner Miles Evans steamrolled the French team of Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, in straight sets, to win their first match of the Olympic beach volleyball tournament.

A historic rematch between Team USA and Team China was everything viewers wanted from watching the Olympics: Top-level play, edge-of-your-seat plays, and a near-massive comeback.

Team USA, who won the gold medal in the event in Tokyo, was down two sets to zero against the 2016 champion team from China. The US then efforted a near-reverse-sweep to force a fifth set, but ended up falling to China in the last set 13-15. 

The U.S. women’s water polo team allowed more goals on Monday than it has allowed in any single game over the last three Olympics, falling 13-11 to Spain. The U.S. only allowed more than 10 goals twice in the Tokyo Olympics, once in Rio 2016, and twice in London 2012. The last time they allowed 13 goals in the Olympics was in their 2012 opener, a win over Hungary.

Team USA will next face Italy (0-1) on Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. ET.

It was a promising start when Ilona Maher scored the first try against France but Seraphine Okemba scored four tries to lift France to a 31-14 win. The Americans will face Great Britain in the quarterfinals.

Team USA’s Nick Itkin had an emotional celebration after he won the men’s individual Foil quarterfinal match against Italy’s Guillaume Bianchi on Monday. 

Itkin, son and student of a former elite fencer from Ukraine, won a bronze medal during his first Olympics experience in Toyko in 2021 and is looking to go higher in 2024.

All three of Team USA’s women’s saber fencers lost their opening bouts Monday morning, but an investigation into possible match-fixing in qualifying for the Games largely overshadowed the competition.

Tatiana Nazlymov was competing a month after she testified in a 13-hour arbitration hearing in which two other American fencers, including the team’s Olympic alternate Maia Chamberlain, challenged her place on the Paris roster. Two complaints were filed in an arbitration procedure known as Section 9 ahead of the Olympics by fencers disputing whether Nazlymov and men’s saber fencer Mitchell Saron should have been included on the U.S. team for Paris.

South Korea’s Ban Hyo-jin won gold in the women’s 10m air rifle event at the 2024 Paris Olympics, while China’s Huang Yuting and Switzerland’s Audrey Gogniat claimed silver and medal, respectively.