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Women's Bascketball

The USA women’s basketball team laid their claim as the most dominant team in the history of the Olympics on Sunday afternoon, surviving a really tough final against France to win 67-66 and secure their eighth consecutive gold medal in the final event of the Paris Games.

In a back-and-forth contest before a very noisy crowd at the Bercy Arena that chanted loudly with each France basket, the Americans trailed by double digits in the third quarter before fighting back to extend their record of 61 successive wins in Olympic competition that dates back to 1992. In doing so, the USA women established the record for the longest Olympic gold medal sequence in a traditional team sport, eclipsing the previous mark set by the USA men’s basketball team.

One US player scored a game-high 21 points in a contest that was only settled when the US teams’ last-second basket came from just inside the three-point line, costing the hosts a chance to extend the game to overtime by centimetres. That France kept it so close was remarkable enough considering only two teams during the US team’s record win streak have managed to keep the margin within single digits.