Olympics Highlights: Day 16

— -- Basketball

The United States won the women’s Olympic basketball gold medal,beating the home team in the title game. The Americans mowed down Australia 76-54.

The U.S. national women’s team has now won 25 straight games while winning the last two Olympic titles and the 1998 world championship.

Lisa Leslie and Natalie Williams led the United States with 15points each. Sheryl Swoopes scored 14 and Yolanda Griffith added13.

Brazil beat South Korea 84-73 for the bronze medal.

In the men’s division, Canada beat Russia 86-to-83 in doubleovertime for seventh place. Italy topped Yugoslavia 69-to-59 forfifth place.

Boxing

Felix Savon joined fellow Cuban Teofilo Stevenson as a winner ofthree Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medals.

The 6-foot-6 Savon outpointed Sultanahmed Ibzagimov of Russian21-13 to win at 201 pounds. The 33-year-old Savon, a six-time worldchampion, became only the third boxer to win three Olympic golds.The other is Lazlo Papp at 165 in 1948 and at 156 in 1952-56.

Three other Cubans also won, two of them beating Russians. Thefour golds equal the number Cuba won in 1996 at Atlanta. There areno Cubans in Sunday afternoon’s six finals.

Two Americans fight Sunday for gold.

Canoe/Kayak

Birgit Fischer became kayaking’s all-time leading Olympic medalwinner with nine and tied the German record for most career goldswith six, and Kurt Holmann’s victory made him Norway’s greatestsummer Olympian.

Germans also won two other finals. Andreas Dittmer won the men’s1,000-meter solo canoe sprint, and Germany finished first in the 500-meter, four-woman kayak sprint.

Cuban-born Angel Perez helped the United States finish sixth inits first Olympic 1,000-meter K-4 finals.

Cycling

Lance Armstrong of Austin, Texas, the two-time Tour de Francechampion, came in third in the Olympic time trial. He lost toViacheslav Ekimov of Russia, U.S. Postal Service teammate andformer Soviet who won a gold medal in the pursuit in the 1988Olympics.

Leontien Zijlaard of Netherlands took her third cycling goldmedal in winning the women’s time trial. She also won the road raceand 3,000-meter individual pursuit, where she set a world record,and took silver in the points race.

Diving

Chinese divers took the gold and silver medals in the men’splatform competition, making China the first nation to win five gold medals at a single Olympic games.

Russian diving star Dimitry Sautin won bronze.

Mark Ruiz of Orlando finished sixth, and David Pichler of Fort Lauderdale was ninth. The U.S. diving team won just one medal in Sydney — Laura Wilkinson’s gold — for its poorest showing since 1912.