Olympic Games (2020)

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    Naomi Osaka Makes U.S. Open Return. But Not for Tennis.

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    Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam singles champion, has taken breaks from tennis for her mental health and to start a family, but she is aiming to compete again in 2024.Naomi Osaka didn’t bring any rackets with her when she arrived at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Wednesday afternoon. Osaka had no plans to play tennis.“For me, coming back here, it means a lot,” Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam singles champion, said. “It’s like seeing an old friend that you haven’t seen in a long time.”Osaka was speaking in the main news conference room on Wednesday inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. She knows it well. It’s where she got to field questions from reporters on some of her best occasions, like her U.S. Open championships in 2018 and 2020. It’s also where she has been during low moments, including a first-round exit at last year’s tournament.“There were some tears shed,” Osaka said about the room. “A lot.”On Wednesday, Osaka had returned for a panel with Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who stands as the most decorated Olympian ever; Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general; and Dr. Brian Hainline, the chief medical officer of the N.C.A.A. and the chairman of the United States Tennis Association board.Michael Phelps, the decorated Olympic swimmer, said in the past he trained more intensely instead of reaching out for help with mental health issues.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe topic of the panel, mental health and sports, is one that Osaka has spoken about often since she cited mental health concerns in her withdrawal from the French Open in 2021. Her exit then led to a break from tennis.Osaka, who turned pro in 2013 as a teenager and came to be seen as the heir apparent to Serena Williams, is away from tennis now, too. In January she announced she was pregnant but planned to play in the 2024 Australian Open. She gave birth to her daughter in July, calling it on Instagram “a cool little intermission.”On Wednesday, Osaka, 25, said she had plenty of time to reflect during her most recent leave from the sport.“It definitely made me appreciate a lot of things that I took for granted,” she said.Osaka did not say when she planned to return to tennis during the panel, but she later told ESPN in an interview that she had designs on playing in 2024, adding that she has been training and should be hitting balls soon.Speaking back in that room, Osaka alluded to the idea of having a long career.“I just remember watching the Australian Open and being very devastated because I’ve never missed an Australian Open,” Osaka said. But while watching, Osaka said, she thought about how late Serena and Venus Williams played into their careers.Serena Williams, who retired at last year’s U.S. Open, played until she was 40. Venus Williams, 43, played at this year’s tournament, losing in the first round of singles.“I was thinking I probably no way will ever play at their age,” Osaka said. “But sitting here, I’m like, you know what? I might do that.”Osaka said pregnancy gave her a lot of time to think, and that she felt isolated at times. She had to force herself to ask for help.“I actually felt lonely during my pregnancy just because I felt like I wasn’t able to do a lot of things,” she said.She added: “Normally I’m thinking, ‘If I’m going to be an independent woman, then I’m not going to ask anyone for help. Whenever something happens, just take it on the chin.’ But then I got to a place where I needed to ask for help.”For decades, many athletes have been reluctant to share their struggles with their mental health. It’s especially the case for professionals, whose jobs require them to push their bodies to perform at the highest level. But in recent years, athletes have gradually become more open about discussing mental health. Besides Osaka, they include the gymnast Simone Biles, the basketball star Kevin Love, and, in tennis, Amanda Anisimova, the young American once ranked in the top 25 who in May cited mental health concerns in deciding to step away from the sport.Among Olympians, Phelps has also led a push to speak out on mental health.Osaka spoke on a panel with Michael Phelps, third from left; Dr. Vivek Murthy, left, the surgeon general; and Brian Hainline, fourth from left, the chief medical officer of the N.C.A.A. and the chair of the United States Tennis Association board.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesPhelps, who has also faced mental health issues, said that, like for Osaka, working through those problems required realizing he had to reach out and ask for help.“I learned that I couldn’t do it all by myself,” Phelps said.After winning six gold medals at the 2004 Athens Games, Phelps entered what he described as a “post-Olympics depression.” But instead of reaching out to someone for help, Phelps said, he compartmentalized his issues by swimming and training more.It wasn’t until about 2014, Phelps said, when he hit a “breaking point.”“I decided that something had to change,” he said. “So for me, I had to become vulnerable for the first time in my life.While Osaka didn’t say exactly when she’ll play again, when she returns the difficulties of life on tour will follow, such as time away from family and the pressure of competing in an individualistic sport. But this time, Osaka said she will be more comfortable seeking help when she needs it.Osaka said that she had two friends she counts on when she is dealing with loneliness.“I know I can reach out to them at any time, and I think it’s really important,” she said. “You’re not alone in anything.” More

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      Can Novak Djokovic Be Invincible Again?

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      For months, the Serbian champion was unbeatable at the sport’s biggest tournaments. Then came the Olympics.For months and months this year, at the most important tennis tournaments, it seemed as if Novak Djokovic was invincible, as if he simply could not be beaten.With the biggest titles on the line, professional tennis threw everything it had at Djokovic for the first seven months of 2021. In Australia in February, he overcame a debilitating abdominal tear, snap Covid-19 lockdowns and the hottest player in the game. In Paris in June, he neutered the most dominating player a Grand Slam tournament has ever known and then staged an epic comeback to win the French Open title. At Wimbledon, he managed some of the best young players in the game as if they were hopeless children.Arriving in Tokyo for the Olympic Games, he quickly became the toast of the athletes’ village, and the gold medal — perhaps two of them — appeared to be little more than a formality.Nenad Lalovic, a fellow Serb and a member of the executive board of the International Olympic Committee, snagged the honor of presiding over the medal ceremony, certain that he would be delivering gold to a man who had become a deity in their homeland.Djokovic’s first victim, Hugo Dellien of Bolivia, asked for Djokovic’s shirt as a souvenir and told him that merely being on the court with him had been a dream come true. After matches, Djokovic headed to the weight room for nighttime training sessions. Can he lose? the rising Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina was asked after Djokovic had dismantled him, 6-3, 6-1, in the round of 16 in Tokyo. “I don’t think so,” he said.Djokovic beat his first two opponents handily during the Olympic tournament.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBut invincibility in sports can be as fleeting as it is powerful. For Djokovic, who traveled to Tokyo to collect the fourth jewel in his quest for a Golden Slam — the four Grand Slam titles and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year — the magic dissipated during a shocking 11-game span that lasted roughly 45 minutes, as Alexander Zverev of Germany stormed back from a set down and conquered the king.An hour later, Djokovic was back on the court, flubbing easy shots in the sweltering night during a mixed-doubles semifinal with Nina Stojanovic. They lost to a vastly inferior duo from Russia. When it was over, he sniffed back his tears and leaned on the shoulder of a teammate as he walked to the locker room.The next afternoon, he flung his racket into the stands and whacked it against the net post as he failed to find the answers against Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain in the bronze medal match.It all seemed so un-Djokovic, so not 2021. Djokovic has not played a competitive match since the Olympics and has remained largely silent, citing a need to rest and nurse an aching shoulder. That has left everyone to wonder which version of Djokovic will take the court this week at the U.S. Open as he tries to become the first man to win a Grand Slam since Rod Laver did so in 1969.“I can’t wait,” Djokovic said in a news conference Friday. “I’m very motivated.”Making an argument against Djokovic is nearly impossible. The U.S. Open is played on hardcourts, the surface on which Djokovic has won 12 of his 20 Grand Slam tournament titles. Djokovic’s chief rivals throughout his career, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, have pulled out as they battle advancing age and injuries. The defending champion, Dominic Thiem, also withdrew because of an injury.As in all Grand Slam tournaments, matches are best-three-of-five sets, which makes upsets less likely. At the Olympics, Zverev was on the edge of defeat and then got remarkably hot for 11 games, which was all he needed to win the match. Could he have sustained that level for another set? Perhaps, but history suggests it would have been very hard.Djokovic during his Australian Open win.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesDjokovic is also likely to play several of his U.S. Open matches at night so that he can be featured in the prime time telecast. He is nearly unbeatable under the lights, when the afternoon heat that can be his kryptonite has subsided.John McEnroe, the seven-time Grand Slam champion and ESPN commentator, said the only person who could beat Djokovic was Djokovic. Last year, Djokovic famously lost his temper in the round of 16, accidentally swatting a ball into the throat of a line judge, resulting in an automatic disqualification.“I think he’s ready for the moment,” McEnroe said of Djokovic during a pretournament conference call on Tuesday.And yet, after Tokyo, the idea that no one can topple Djokovic on the sport’s biggest stages is no longer absurd.“For another player, it’s always good to see the vulnerability of the all-time greats,” said Paul Annacone, a former coach of Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. “It’s reassuring. But in this case, it is a very measured level of reassurance.”Invincibility is a rare commodity in tennis. There are so many matches and so many tournaments in so many countries, it’s virtually impossible not to lay the occasional egg. Martina Navratilova probably came the closest to it in 1983, when she played 87 matches and lost just once. Steffi Graf won the Golden Slam in 1988, a campaign that included a scary, 34-minute 6-0, 6-0 triumph in the French Open final. Graf lost three matches that year, but never when it counted most.As Djokovic begins his quest for perhaps the most hallowed achievement in the game, Zverev figures to be his most likely foe, especially with the memory of Tokyo still fresh.Djokovic took apart three other next-generation stars in Grand Slam finals earlier this year.Djokovic hoisted the French Open trophy in June.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesHis final against Russia’s Daniil Medvedev in Australia quickly turned into a three-set clinic. At Wimbledon, Matteo Berrettini of Italy won the opening set of the final but got no closer.Stefanos Tsitsipas, the young Greek hope, came the closest to an upset, grabbing a two-set lead in the French Open final. He then lost his serve, and his nerve, early in the third set and never recovered.Against Djokovic at the Olympics, Zverev displayed a rarely seen ability to neutralize Djokovic’s most dangerous weapon — the greatest service return in the history of the sport — with his twisting 130-mile-per-hour blasts. As the finish line drew closer, he swung even harder, unleashing strokes with a freedom that had long eluded him in the most crucial moments.Last week, Zverev blitzed Andrey Rublev of Russia in the final of the Western & Southern Open, prevailing in 58 minutes.Like everyone else, Zverev knows Djokovic is a heavy favorite, though perhaps not an invincible one. Djokovic will walk onto the courts in New York on rested legs that have not been taxed in nearly a month. Will he be fresh or rusty?“It’s definitely going to be an interesting U.S. Open,” Zverev said after the Western & Southern final. “I know where I stand. I know how I am playing.”The losses in Tokyo led Djokovic to take a hiatus. He said that he did not regret his journey to the Olympics, especially the opportunity to mingle and dine and stretch and celebrate with thousands of other athletes in the Olympic Village. After, though, he was exhausted, so he decided to skip the Western & Southern Open, which he had planned to play.Djokovic returns the ball during a practice session on Saturday ahead of the U.S. Open.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesHe said that he could feel the pressure and the expectations mounting and that he expected fierce challenges to come from Medvedev and Zverev, but that he was trying to approach the challenges one ball at a time.“There is a slight difference in terms of what is at stake, but I don’t give it too big a significance on a daily basis,” he said.After nearly a month without competition, Djokovic has most likely put Tokyo in his rearview mirror, chalking up the experience to extreme heat and the precariousness of the best-two-of-three format. But he may need a match or three to find his rhythm and recapture that aura of inevitability he carried onto the court all year, a weapon that can be far more potent than the special drinks and energy bars he packs in his tennis bag.During her dominant run, Navratilova said, she could see in the eyes of her opponents before the first ball was hit that they knew how slim their chances were. The idea that the match might not go her way defied logic.“Your best is better than their best, your medium is better than their medium, so why would you lose?” she said.Amazingly, Djokovic has been at this level, or very close to it, twice before. In 2011 and in 2015, he won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments and dominated his chief rivals, Federer and Nadal. For long stretches, it appeared as though he might never lose.And then, eventually, he did. Nothing lasts forever, in tennis or in life, even when it somehow seems impossible that it won’t. More

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      Breanna Stewart’s Golden Journey to Motherhood

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      “I went from one emotion to the next,” the W.N.B.A. star said. “From winning a gold medal to realizing, OK, I’m going home, and my daughter is going to be born in less than 24 hours.”Breanna Stewart is ready to tell her secret.She kept it for months: During the first half of the current W.N.B.A. season, as captain of the Seattle Storm; in Tokyo this month, as she led the United States to Olympic gold in women’s basketball.Only a few close friends, which included a pair of teammates, knew of her and her wife’s private joy.“We just wanted to share this with a very close circle,” she told me last week, referring to herself and her wife, Marta Xargay. “Just to have this special time in life to ourselves for a while.”Many consider Stewart the greatest female basketball player of this era. Now they can also call her a mom.Stewart and Xargay’s gestational surrogate carried an embryo that had been seeded in one of Stewart’s eggs. Four days after winning a gold medal and most valuable player honors at the Tokyo Games women’s basketball tournament, Stewart experienced a moment that she said could compare with nothing else: the birth of her first child. “It took my breath away,” she said. “The most important moment of my life.”The no-fanfare birth of Ruby Mae Stewart Xargay is a story of love and family in the modern age — without limits. It shows how female sports stars are pushing past tradition and finding a level of power that extends to every aspect of their lives.“This is about controlling my own destiny,” Stewart told me. “It’s about making decisions that fit me, fit my family and where we want to go, where we want to be, and not waiting.”Though still rare, having children and returning to competition is not new for the best female athletes. In recent years, a small number of mothers, about 10 or so, have played in the W.N.B.A. each season.But Stewart, 26, and in her prime, is helping chart a new course. Having missed the entire W.N.B.A. season in 2019 because of an Achilles’ rupture, using a surrogate afforded her the chance to keep her career going without another interruption.She is now the most prominent player to become a mother since the Women’s National Basketball Players Association championed a trailblazing labor agreement that set a new template for how sports leagues should treat women. Formalized in 2020, that labor deal did not just increase leaguewide salaries. It also ensured full pay for maternity leave, boosted access to child care and provided significant financial support for child adoption, surrogacy and egg freezing so that players can have children when the time is right.Stewart during the gold medal game of the Tokyo Games against Japan.Doug Mills/The New York Times“I’ve always known I wanted to have a family, always wanted to be a younger mom,” Stewart said. “It will not be easy, but why can’t I be the best player, a mom and have a child in the way we have done?”Stewart pulled this off in what for her is typical fashion — carefully and tactically.In 2017, her second year as a pro, she revealed in an essay that she is a survivor of sexual abuse endured in her childhood, using the public disclosure to advocate on behalf of other survivors. As an emerging star in a predominantly Black sport, Stewart had not spoken out much on matters of race. But starting last summer, after listening to her peers and getting involved in protests in the Seattle area, she began speaking loudly for Black justice.For a long time she was quiet, too, about her relationship with Xargay, a now-retired Spanish basketball player with whom she had fallen in love while the two played on a Russian Euroleague team in 2019. But in May, Stewart posted to social media a picture of their engagement. The couple married on July 6 in a small ceremony atop their downtown Seattle condominium, details Stewart had not made public until now.Stewart and Xargay decided they wanted a child in the summer and fall of 2020, as they huddled together through a W.N.B.A. season played in a bubble in Bradenton, Fla.When the season finished, they interviewed surrogates and searched for the right sperm donor. Using an egg frozen during Stewart’s 2019 rehab, the pregnancy took hold. Then there were months of Zoom check-ins with the surrogate and her Idaho doctors.All the while, Stewart had to keep her focus on basketball, which proved particularly challenging in Tokyo. So long as the baby didn’t come early, birth would be induced just after the Games.Stewart said she had to compartmentalize as never before. “When it was game time at the Olympics, I focused fully on the game,” she said. “When I was off the court, I could think of Marta and the baby.”In keeping with her private nature, Stewart was quiet about Ruby to her fellow members of the U.S. national team. She told me that only her Storm teammates and close friends, Jewell Loyd and Sue Bird, knew what was going on behind the scenes. Bird is a founder of TOGETHXR, the media company for which Stewart filmed a documentary about her surrogacy journey.“I went from one emotion to the next,” Stewart said. “From winning a gold medal to realizing, OK, I’m going home, and my daughter is going to be born in less than 24 hours.”What a week she would experience. The gold medal mission accomplished, Stewart flew home with the team, arriving in Los Angeles on Aug. 8, a Sunday. From there she boarded a private plane to Boise, where Xargay and the surrogate waited. Last Monday afternoon, at the Birkeland Maternity Center, in Nampa, Idaho, Stewart and Xargay watched Ruby slip easily into the world.The brown-haired girl’s wailing shrieks filled the room. She weighed 9 pounds 4 ounces. “I was in shock, seeing a baby being born in front of me,” said Stewart, who stands an angular, broad-shouldered 6 feet 4 inches. “I felt like crying. I also just felt the love that was in the air.”Stewart cut the umbilical cord. Soon, she and Xargay held Ruby for the first time. They laid their baby on a bed. They placed the freshly won gold medal at Ruby’s side.On Thursday, Stewart was back to basketball. She flew alone to Phoenix, where the Storm played the championship game of the W.N.B.A.’s inaugural Commissioner’s Cup, a midseason tournament featuring the teams with the best records from the league’s two conferences. Stewart scored 17 points, missing just two field-goal attempts, and the Storm defeated the Connecticut Sun, 79-57.When the game was done, she pulled her team around her in the locker room.“I just wanted you guys to know that Marta and I had a baby,” she remembered saying to a sea of stunned faces. “It was like, ‘Wait, neither one of you are pregnant, so how can that happen?’”As she explained, her teammates showered her with hugs.Stewart told me she would miss only two Storm games to bond with Ruby and to rest. When the Storm play the Liberty for the second time this week on Friday night, she will be there.There is no slowing down in professional women’s basketball. The top players go from battling through W.N.B.A. seasons in America to months spent overseas, seeking to maximize their earnings while still in their prime.It is a grinding treadmill Stewart has been on since she left UConn in 2016. She will not stop. Only now she will have baby Ruby along for the ride, and no more secrets. More

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      USWNT Falls to Canada, Ending Frustrating Olympic Trip

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      A second-half penalty kick sends Canada to the gold medal game, and leaves the U.S. seeking the bronze, and answers.KASHIMA, Japan — The referee’s whistle had barely finished chirping when the Canadian players sprinted to the middle of the field and unleashed an explosion of exaltation that echoed around an otherwise silent stadium. More

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      How Naomi Osaka's Loss Gives Tokyo Its Latest Olympic Setback

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      The tennis superstar, who lit the caldron during the opening ceremony as one of Japan’s biggest sports celebrities, was upset in the third round and is out of the Tokyo Games.TOKYO — For Japan, the Tokyo Olympics have been filled with bumps and potholes and disappointing surprises. A yearlong postponement, the barring of international fans — then all fans — and the hemorrhaging of billions of dollars from lost ticket sales and tourism. Even a typhoon blowing just north on Tuesday provided a storm cloud metaphor they did not need. More

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      3×3 Basketball Comes to the Games With a G.O.A.T.: Dusan Bulut

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      Since 2012, FIBA has organized six World Cup tournaments in three-on-three basketball. Dusan Bulut and his Serbian teammates have won four of them.TOKYO — It all started with “White Men Can’t Jump.”Dusan Bulut was 9 years old and channel surfing at home in Novi Sad, Serbia, when the street ball caper starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes appeared on the television. More

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      Olympics: Daniel Alves and the True Value of a Gold Medal

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      The Olympics may be a major championship for women’s teams, but they remain an afterthought for the men.Daniel Alves has seen it all, done it all. He has won league titles in three countries, picked up nine cups, conquered Europe with his club and South America with his country. He has 41 major honors to his name, officially making him the most decorated player in history. But still, when André Jardine asked him to take on one last job, his eyes lit up.Jardine, the manager of Brazil’s Olympic men’s soccer team, had framed his pitch smartly. There was, he told Alves, still one thing missing from his career. For all that he had achieved, he had never been to an Olympic Games, much less won a medal. “Let’s complete your résumé,” Jardine said. At 38, entering a third decade as a professional, Alves could not resist.The appeal, for Jardine — only three years older than the player he has appointed as captain for Brazil’s campaign in Tokyo — is obvious. Men’s soccer at the Olympics is, essentially, an under-23 affair: A majority of each team’s squad in Japan can have been born no earlier than Jan. 1, 1997. But there are spaces reserved for three “overage” players.Jardine had been considering how best to fill those spots on Brazil’s roster when it emerged that injury would rule Alves out of the Copa América. Here, he felt, was the chance to draft a figure who is “respected by all Brazilian players, a leader, a winner,” a player not only with “lots of charisma” but with a wealth of experience to help guide his younger teammates. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. If anything, it felt like a sign. “The universe wanted it this way,” Jardine said.It is easy to understand why it struck such a chord with Alves, too. “Challenges like this really motivate me,” he said. “The Olympics are magical: You get emotional thinking about them. To represent my country, my people, in a competition as important as the Olympics is really, really incredible.”“The Olympics are magical,” Alves said. Not everyone sees it that way.Phil Noble/ReutersAnd yet — setting aside the warming, rosy glow of the idea of Alves’s adding yet another trophy to his personal palmarès, all in the name of defending his country’s honor — his presence at the tournament does not necessarily feed into the idea that men’s soccer at the Olympics is especially important at all.That is not to question his motives: Alves is in Tokyo to perform, and to win. His “ultimate ambition,” he has said, is to compete for Brazil in the World Cup next summer; only injury denied him a place in Tite’s squad for the Copa América this summer. This is a chance for him to stake a claim, to prove he can still cut it when surrounded by players a decade and a half his junior. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, just along for the ride.But the sight of Alves, one of the finest players of his generation, in a cobbled-together under-23 team serves to highlight the inescapable sense that Olympic men’s soccer is something of a novelty act, simultaneously a major international tournament and an inconvenient afterthought, an honor with no clear meaning, a trophy with an asterisk.A glance at the other overage players joining Alves in Tokyo illustrates the issue. New Zealand has selected arguably its best player, in the burly shape of the Burnley striker Chris Wood, to give it the best chance of securing a medal. France, on the other hand, has chosen André-Pierre Gignac and Florian Thauvin, currently playing for Tigres, in Mexico, and the Montpellier midfielder Téji Savanier, none of whom might be regarded as their country’s best player.France called up 35-year-old André-Pierre Gignac for the Games.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesArgentina and Romania, meanwhile, have named only one overage player each. One is a goalkeeper, and the other is a defender who does not currently have a club. Neither country has been tempted to send anyone who might count as a star. Or, rather, neither has been able to, because clubs are not mandated to release their players for the Olympics, because the Games do not feature on men’s soccer’s official, sanctioned calendar.Despite that, Spain seems to be taking the whole thing seriously: A clutch of players fresh from the semifinals of Euro 2020 have traveled to Japan, including Pau Torres, Dani Olmo and Pedri. Germany’s 22-man delegation, on the other hand, contains not a single player knocked out of the European Championship in the round of 16.All of the players in Japan will, of course, regard being at an Olympics — even in Tokyo’s diminished circumstances — as a rare privilege. Those who have competed in previous Games, even established stars of Europe’s major leagues, have been awed by the atmosphere (and, to an extent, the abandon) of the athletes’ village, star-struck by their sudden proximity to the biggest names in track and field.Lionel Messi won an Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games, but almost no one counts it among his career highlights.Cezaro De Luca/EpaBut exactly what success — or failure — means in a soccer sense is less obvious. It is only a few weeks since Lionel Messi was celebrating winning his first major international honor with Argentina at the Copa América. At last, Messi had ended not only his long wait to achieve something with his country, but Argentina’s restless purgatory in the international wilderness. It was, all the stories said, the nation’s first major trophy since 1993.Except, of course, that it wasn’t. Argentina won gold in the Olympics in both 2004 and 2008. Messi was part of the latter team. That neither was mentioned highlighted the stark, and perhaps unfair, truth about Olympic men’s soccer: Ultimately it does not count, not really, not properly. It exists in an uneasy, liminal sort of zone, somewhere between a youth competition and an adult one, between authentic and ersatz.In the women’s game, of course, that is not the case. Or, at least, it has not traditionally been the case. The Olympics have at times been the most high-profile event in the women’s calendar, the grandest stage that the game could offer.When Abby Wambach, the former U.S. striker, released a book on leadership in 2019, she was trailed on the front cover not as a World Cup winner but as a “two-time Olympic gold medalist.” To some extent, that may have been an attempt to market her work to a non-soccer-specific audience, of course, but still: The choice of honor felt significant.Dzsenifer Marozsan helped lead Germany to its first women’s soccer gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The title is on par with the World Cup in the women’s game.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersThe team that the United States sent for its opening game of the Olympic tournament on Wednesday — a 3-0 defeat to Sweden, in which Megan Rapinoe suggested that the team had done some “dumb” things — contained only two changes from the side that started the World Cup final two years ago. So many of the biggest names in the women’s game are in Tokyo, in fact, that the tournament has the air of an all-star competition.The temptation is to believe that the event’s status will wane as the World Cup continues to grow, that the adage — that the Olympics is the pinnacle for sports that do not have one of their own — will hold, that no sport, ultimately, can have two pinnacles..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That is not necessarily true. Golf and tennis have both embraced their relatively new status as Olympic disciplines. Winning gold at the Olympics — competing at the Olympics — always means something. What it means, though — how much it means — is not fixed. Alves sees it as a step on a journey. Messi saw it as a road to nowhere. Rapinoe may well see it as a destination in itself. But all of that can change. The value of gold, after all, can rise and fall.CorrespondenceA frankly unlikely claim of clairvoyance from Carl Lennertz as regards to Lionel Messi’s signing a new contract with Barcelona. “I knew he’d re-up when his kids cried last year at the thought of leaving,” he writes. “I’m glad he chose family happiness.”Carl’s prescience is not without foundation, as it happens. It is rarely discussed in the context of transfers — which we tend to assume are determined by money and ambition and status, probably in that order, and nothing else — but family deserves to be in that mix, too. It is often why players choose one country, or one city, over another; or why, as in Messi’s case, staying is easier than going.That does not apply to only the finest players, either: One player I spoke with in the past few months wanted to sign a new contract, ignoring a potential Premier League move, because his daughter had just started school and he did not want to force her to make new friends. Footballers, in other words, are humans, too.Shawn Donnelly, meanwhile, has his finger on the pulse of all the major issues of the day. “If we are going to keep calling it a ‘back heel’, then we should start calling a toe poke a ‘front toe,’” he wrote. I am currently trying to teach my son the back heel, with considerable success: He now uses it as his default passing option, like some louche South American playmaker. And it has, in the course of that educational process, occurred to me that it does border on tautologous.And it falls to Mark Hornish to make the semiregular plea for some coverage of Major League Soccer in this newsletter. “It may surprise you to learn that the United States has a domestic league,” he wrote, with a healthy slice of sarcasm. “It would be great if you could turn your gaze on it in these coming weeks.” I will do my best, Mark. Leave it with me. More