Quick notes: France, Argentina beaten; Brazil win

France’s Olympics men’s soccer campaign got off to a dreadful start when they were thrashed 4-1 by Mexico while Argentina suffered a shock 2-0 loss to Australia as the group stage kicked off today. Brazil striker Richarlison scored the first hat-trick of the men’s tournament as the defending champions held off a late rally from Germany in a 4-2 win at Yokohama’s International Stadium. Hosts Japan made a winning start courtesy of a late strike from midfielder Takefusa Kubo in a 1-0 victory over South Africa in their Group A match. Meanwhile, Spain played out a goalless stalemate with Egypt in Sapporo. Elsewhere in Group D, Franck Kessie scored the winner to earn Ivory Coast a 2-1 win over Saudi Arabia. In Group B, Burnley striker Chris Wood fired a late goal to help New Zealand beat South Korea 1-0 in Kashima — earning the Kiwis their first win in Olympic men’s soccer.

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Tokyo logs 1979 Covid-19 cases

Czech beach volleyball player Marketa Nausch and Dutch taekwondo hope Reshmie Oogink were today forced out of the Olympic Games after testing positive for Covid-19, taking the total number of infected athletes in the city to 10. Three athletes and a coach have so far tested positive for the virus in the Czech contingent. This is the second case of a Dutch athlete testing positive for the virus here after skateboarder Candy Jacobs. On Wednesday, Chilean Taekwondo player Fernanda Aguirre, Jacobs and Czech TT player Pavel Sirucek were forced to withdraw from their respective events and placed in quarantine. American beach volleyball player Taylor Crabb too tested positive for Covid-19. Tokyo city also touched a six-month high in its daily case count, reporting 1979 new infections a day before the Games opening ceremony.

Djokovic has Golden Slam in his sights

Novak Djokovic has learnt from his previous Olympics heartbreak and will not allow himself to be distracted from his quest to become the first man to complete the Golden Slam. Germany’s Steffi Graf is the only player to have won all four Grand Slams and the Olympics gold medal in the same year but the 34-year-old Serbian is three fifths of the way there. Djokovic needs to win the Olympics title in Tokyo and then the US Open in August to match Graf’s 1988 feat. The Olympics, however, has not proved the best hunting ground for Djokovic in his previous three appearances. “I know it’s going to be boring for you guys to hear me say that I will take things very slowly and cautiously and focus on the next challenge,” Djokovic, who owns only a bronze medal from Beijing in 2008, said. “But this is the kind of approach that I really need to have because in the past I wasn’t probably truly experiencing that approach, and that has backfired on me. I started to feel that there were lot of distractions around that was influencing my performance.” In the opening round, he will have his first meeting with Bolivia’s 139th-ranked Hugo Dellien. “I know that there is a lot of things on the line, and know there’s history on the line,” he said.

Bear sighting at baseball stadium

A bear appears to have ignored the ban on spectators at the Olympics. Japanese media reported a bear was seen by guards early Wednesday at Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium before Japan and Australia’s softball teams met in the opening event of the Olympics. Fukushima is about 250km north of the main Olympics sites in Tokyo. Local media reported it was an Asian black bear. “As we were driving up today, we were actually looking to see if we could find another bear,” US coach Ken Eriksen said. Agencies