Rio2016: Day 5

NEW YORK

Carmelo Anthony on Wednesday became the highest-ever scorer in Olympics for the USA men’s basketball team as they beat Australia 98-88 on Day 5 of the Rio Games.

Anthony passed LeBron James and David Robinson with 276 career points in the Olympics. He was a part of the roster as the Americans won gold at the 2008 Beijing Games and defended it in London in 2012.

The U.S. also continued its dominance in the pool after the team of Allison Schmitt, Leah Smith, Maya DiRado and Katie Ledecky won the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay, with Australia taking silver and Canada bronze.

Since its introduction at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, the event has been won on every occasion except in Beijing, where the team took the bronze medal.

Great Britain won its first ever-gold medal in the diving event when Jack Laffer and Chris Mears finished tops in the synchronized 3m springboard platform.

Mears was given a 5 percent chance of survival after he suffered a ruptured spleen in 2009 while training for the Youth Olympics.

He then experienced a seven-hour seizure that left him in a coma for three days and doctors believed he would be left with brain damage and severe physical disabilities.

Americans Sam Dorman and Michael Hixson won the silver and the Chinese duo of Cao Yuan and Qin Kai took the bronze.

Kohei Uchimura proved why is often touted as the best gymnast ever by winning the men’s all-around gold for Japan. Oleg Verniaiev of Ukraine took silver while Max Whitlock won bronze for Great Britain -- that country’s first medal in the event in 108 years.

Honduras forced a 1-1 draw against a Lionel Messi-less Argentina squad to knock out the gold medalists from the Beijing Games and 2004 Athens Olympics.

And another regional powerhouse, Mexico, was eliminated from the quarterfinals after losing 1-0 to South Korea.

Fiji knocked out rugby royalty from competition when it defeated New Zealand 12-7.

Great Britain beat Argentina 5-0 in the other rugby sevens quarter-final match. South Africa blew out Australia 25-5.

When you think of Ethiopia at the Olympics, swimming doesn’t readily come to mind. But that didn’t stop Robel Kiros Habte from entering the race, finishing half a lap behind his competitors.

Amid the social media furor that ensued, it emerged that Habte’s father was the president of the country’s swimming federation, giving detractors ammunition against the portly Olympian.

London 2012 gold medalist weightlifter Lu Xiaojun of China broke is own world record with a 177kg snatch at the 77kg (169-pound) class, but it wasn’t enough to win gold as he was bested by Kazakhstan’s Nijat Rahimov who shattered the clean and jerk world record to equal Lu’s 379kg total and win on his weigh-in advantage. Rahimov served a doping ban in 2013-2015.

Egypt’s Mohamed Mahmoud took bronze.