TOKYO — April Ross is the last medalist standing in the Olympic beach volleyball women’s bracket.

The American 2016 bronze medalist and her partner ousted defending champion Laura Ludwig of Germany on Tuesday and advanced to the semifinals at the Shiokaze Park venue.

Ross, who also has a silver medal from London, is the last woman remaining who has reached the podium at a previous Summer Games.

This time, Ross is playing with Olympic first-timer Alix Klineman. They beat Ludwig and her new partner Maggie Kozuch 21-19, 21-19.

Ross and Klineman are the U.S.’s last hopes for a beach volleyball medal in Tokyo. The sport’s birthplace has never been shut out in the Olympics.

TRACK & FIELD: Allyson Felix won her first-round heat of the 400 meters as she began her Tokyo quest for a 10th Olympic medal.

The 35-year-old Felix, who’s competing at her fifth Olympics, has six gold medals and three silvers on her resume. She’s tied with Jamaican great Merlene Ottey for the most women’s track medals in Olympic history. Felix has a chance to medal in the 400 and may have another shot in the women’s 4×400 this weekend.

Before her race, she was introduced as a legend.

Felix ran in spikes designed by her new company, Saysh. It made the moment more special. The only thing missing was her young daughter, Camryn, who’s back home.

“It’s changed everything,” Felix said of motherhood. “It’s given me a different drive. … I think it’s even more meaningful to be on this stage as a mom.”

• While Belarus sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was seeking a humanitarian visa to leave the Tokyo Olympics safely, she also was waging a legal fight to be allowed to run in the 200 meters.

She won the first but lost the second, the Court of Arbitration for Sport revealed.

Sports’ highest court has detailed the legal steps Tsimanouskaya took Monday in the hours after she sought protection in Japan during an airport standoff to avoid returning to Belarus, where she believes her life would be in danger.

CAS said in a statement that it denied Tsimanouskaya’s request for an interim ruling Monday to overturn Belarus Olympic officials’ refusal to let her race in the 200.
The heats were held Monday morning and the semifinals in the evening session at the Olympic Stadium.

Tsimanouskaya “was not able to prove her case to get an interim relief,” the court said in a statement, without giving details.

The decision to deny the 24-year-old runner an urgent interim ruling clearing her to compete was made solely by the head of the Games-time Olympic court, CAS said.

That judge is American lawyer Michael Lenard, vice president of the CAS management board who represented the United States in handball at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Later Monday, Tsimanouskaya went to Poland’s embassy in Tokyo and was successful in getting a visa to enter that country. Poland is a member of the European Union and Belarus is not.

Tsimanouskaya sought and got protection from Japanese authorities at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Sunday evening to avoid returning to Belarus.

She had been fiercely criticized in the autocratic country for using social media to criticize Belarus track officials in Tokyo. She said they entered her in the 4×400 relay team, a distance she does not run, without her consent.

Tsimanouskaya competed in the Olympic 100 heats on Friday. She placed fourth and did not advance.

KAYAK: New Zealand’s Lisa Carrington blew away the field in winning her third consecutive women’s kayak sprint 200 at the Sea Forest Waterway.

The gold medal could be the first of a potential four medals for Carrington in Tokyo. She’s also in the women’s kayak double 500 later Tuesday and the 500 single and fours later in the week.

Carrington bolted out of the start and had a lead of half a boat length barely 50 meters into the race. She beat Spain’s Teresa Portela of Spain by 0.76 seconds.

Emma Aastrand Jorgensen of Denmark won the bronze medal.

MONDAY’S EVENTS

BASEBALL: Brandon Dickson, a 36-year-old nine seasons removed from the major leagues, was the first out of the bullpen and the first to stumble.

Edwin Jackson, a 37-year-old released by five big league teams, was the last.

Four of seven U.S. relievers combined to give up five runs as the United States blew a three-run lead in a 7-6 loss to Japan on Monday night that pushed the Americans within a loss of Olympic elimination.

“We played a good game tonight,” U.S. Manager Mike Scioscia said. “There were some things that got away from us on the mound.”

Japan overcame a short outing by Masahiro Tanaka. Yuki Yanagita tied it 6-6 with an RBI grounder in the ninth off Scott McGough and Fukuoka teammate Takuya Kai hit a winning single in the 10th against Jackson (0-1) that put the hosts in the semifinals.

Suguru Iwazaki, Koudai Senga, Yasuaki Yamasaki, Yudai Ohno and Ryoji Kuribayashi (1-0) combined for 5 1/3 innings of one-hit scoreless relief. The only blemish against Japan’s bullpen was Portland Sea Dogs first baseman Triston Casas’ second homer of the tournament, a three-run drive in the third. That put the U.S. ahead 6-3 against Koyo Aoyogi, who gave up five hits in one inning.

TRACK AND FIELD: Sifan Hassan scored two remarkable victories on the Olympic track Monday. Her gold-medal run in the women’s 5,000 meters came a mere 11 hours after she picked herself up from a scary fall on the final lap of her 1,500-meter heat to not only finish that race – but win it, as well.

Those two wins kept Hassan, the Ethiopian-born 28-year-old who now competes for the Netherlands, very much in the mix for not one, not two, but three medals – in the 1,500, the 5,000 and the 10,000.

It’s a never-before-attempted Olympic journey that will require six races over eight days. It’s a journey most thought would be impossible even before the sort of fall that can take even the heartiest of runners off the track.

At around the time she was wrapping up her 5,000 victory, the United States breathed a big sigh of relief when it captured its first gold medal of the track meet. It came unfashionably late – the end of Day 4 – and from an unlikely source: the women’s discus throw.

Valarie Allman opened the final with a throw of 226 feet, 3 inches, then waited through an hourlong rain delay and nearly 50 throws by her competition. Nobody passed her, and America had its first gold medal of the meet.

Earlier in the day, the American favorite in the 100-meter hurdles, Keni Harrison, came in second to Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, who was born and raised in the United States but competes for her mother’s homeland, Puerto Rico.

The day’s other gold went to Morocco steeplechaser Soufiane el-Bakkali, whose victory ended 40 years of Kenyan dominance in the Olympics.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: The next challenge for the U.S. in its quest to win a seventh consecutive Olympic gold medal is Australia as the Americans Monday night drew their rival in the quarterfinals of the women’s basketball tournament.

The Opals beat the U.S. in an exhibition last month in Las Vegas and will be the latest test for a U.S. team that has been challenged at the Tokyo Games unlike any other time during its gold medal run.

The U.S. and Australia are ranked No. 1 and 2 in the world and usually meet later in the Olympics, but the Aussies barely qualified for the quarters. The Opals needed to beat Puerto Rico by 24 points on Monday night to advance after dropping their first two games of the tournament.

The other quarterfinals matchups on Wednesday include: Group A winner Spain (3-0) will face France (1-2, third place in Group B), Group C winner China (3-0) plays Serbia (2-1, second place in Group A), and Group C second-place finisher Belgium (2-1) drew a matchup with Japan (2-1, second place in Group B).

The U.S.-Australia winner will play the China-Serbia winner in one semifinal, and the Belgium-Japan winner plays the Spain-France victor in the other. The quarterfinals are win-or-go-home; a victory means teams are assured of two more games — the semifinals followed by a gold- or bronze-medal contest — before leaving Tokyo. The gold medal game is on Sunday.

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