London Olympics men’s soccer: Mexico, Brazil to meet in final

LONDON — Mexico will be in the men’s Olympic soccer final for the first time when it plays Brazil on Saturday.

Mexico got to the gold-medal match with a 3-1 win over Japan on Tuesday. Brazil beat South Korea, 3-0, in the other semifinal.

Mexico’s previous best finish was losing a bronze-medal game to Japan in 1968 in Mexico City.

Marco Fabian, Oribe Peralta and Javier Cortes scored goals for Mexico.

Leandro Damiao scored two goals in the second half to spark Brazil to its win. Brazil has not been in a gold-medal match since 1988 in Seoul.

The U.S. men did not qualify to play in the Olympic tournament.

Canoe/kayak: Josefa Idem of Italy became the first woman to compete in eight Olympics when she went in the 500-meter kayak single. Her first Games were in Los Angeles in 1984, when she was competing for West Germany. Meanwhile, Carrie Johnson, the lone U.S. entrant, finished sixth in her heat and did not advance.

Equestrian: One day after winning its first gold medal in 60 years in team show jumping, Britain was back on top of the stand with a win in team dressage. Germany was awarded the silver and Netherlands the bronze. The U.S. team of Jan Ebeling, Tina Konyot and Steffen Peters finished sixth. Ebeling was aboard Rafalca, a horse co-owned by Ann Romney, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Sailing: The U.S. hasn’t come close to winning a medal in sailing and Tuesday didn’t change anything. It was the final time for windsurfing in the Games. In 2016 it will be replaced by kiteboarding. The final men’s winner was Dorian van Rijsselberge of the Netherlands. Britain’s Nick Dempsey got second and Przemyslaw Miarczynski of Poland was third. Bob Willis of the U.S. finished 22nd. On the women’s side, Marina Alabau Neira of Spain got the final gold and was followed by Tuuli Petaja of Finland and Zofia Noceti-Klepacka of Poland. The U.S.’ Farrah Hall finished 20th. Stu McNay and Graham Biehl finished 14th after 10 races in the men’s 470. They did not advance to the medal race. In the women’s 470, Amanda Clark and Sarah Lihan are seventh overall with two races to go. The top 10 advance. The U.S. team of Anna Tunnicliffe, Debbie Capozzi and Molly O’Bryan Vandemoer is down 2-0 to Finland in the quarterfinals of the match racing competition.

Synchronized swimming: Everyone knew who would win. The only question was by how much. Natalia Ishchenko and Svetlana Romashina of Russia won by more than four points over Ona Carbonell Ballestero and Andrea Fuentes Fache of Spain. Huang Xuechen and Liu Ou of China got the bronze. The lone U.S. entrants in the sport — Mary Killman and Mariya Koroleva — finished 11th of 12.

Table tennis: China continued its dominance by winning the women’s team competition. It beat Japan in the final, 3-0. China has won 23 of 27 golds since 1988. The men should increase that by one on Wednesday. Singapore beat South Korea, 3-0, for the bronze.

Weightlifting: The competition wrapped up with Iran taking first and second in the super-heavyweight division. Behdad Salimikordasiabi, the reigning world champion, took the gold with Sajjad Anoushiravani getting silver. Ruslan Albegov of Russia got the bronze. There was a scary moment when defending Olympic champion Matthias Steiner lost his balance and a 432-pound barbell fell on his neck. He got to his feet and waved to the crowd but did not come back to competition.

Wrestling: Kim Hyeon-woo of South Korea beat Tamas Lorincz of Hungary to win the gold medal in the 145-pound Greco-Roman class. Manuchar Tskhadaia of Georgia and Steeve Guenot of France were awarded the bronze. Justin Leonard of the U.S. was one for three at the competition, winning his first match against Tsutomo Fujimura of Japan, then losing to Lorincz and Frank Staebler of Germany. In the 212-pound class, Iran won its third gold when Ghasem Gholamreza Rezaei beat Rustam Totrov of Russia. The bronze medals went to Artur Aleksanyan of Armenia and Jimmy Lidberg of Sweden.

john.cherwa@latimes.com