Briefly

Basketball

Katy Steding, Dawn Staley and Venus Lacy helped the Americans to a 101-84 victory over Cuba. The trio came off the bench to give the United States the lead after it trailed by seven points early.

Boxing

Terrance Cauthen scored a 18-6 victory over Mahamatkodir Abdullaev of Uzbekistan in a 132-pound first-round bout.

The other American fighting was Albert Guardado, a 106-pounder who skipped tryouts for the 1992 Olympic team to go to his high school prom. In his Olympic debut, Guardado was an 11-9 winner over Healer Modiradio of Botswana.

Cycling

The medal hopes of Americans Linda Brenneman, Allison Dunlap and Jeanne Golay were dashed by Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli of France, the world’s premier road racer. Longo-Ciprelli pulled away to a 25-second victory in the 64.8-mile road race.

Equestrian

Karen and David O’Connor, a husband-and-wife riding team, helped the U.S. take a lead over Great Britain after the opening day of the three-day team equestrian event.

Fencing

Peter Westbrook, only the seventh U.S. athlete to participate in six Olympics, was a first-round loser in the men’s individual sabre. Westbrook, 44, still has one event left in his Olympic finale - Wednesday’s team sabre competition.

Gymnastics

Shannon Miller led a strong showing that put the U.S. in second place, behind Russia, heading into Tuesday’s finals.

The U.S. led two-time defending world champ Romania, thanks largely to Miller. She started the compulsories with a 9.775 on the uneven bars, added a 9.787 on the floor and a 9.762 on the vault.

Judo

For the second consecutive day, both Americans were eliminated in their opening matches. Failing to qualify were Sandra Bacher of San Jose, Calif., and Rene Capo of Minneapolis, at 34 the oldest member of the American judo team.

Rowing

Americans Missy Schwen and Karen Kraft, silver medalists at last year’s world championships, won their Olympic preliminary heat by more than a boat length to reach Thursday’s semifinals in the women’s pair.

Shooting

Josh Lakatos of Pasadena, Calif., won silver and Lance Bade of Ridgefield, Wash., won bronze in the trap competition. The gold went to Australia’s Michael Diamond.

Soccer

Women’s soccer made its Olympic debut with the favored U.S. outshooting Denmark 24-0 in a 3-0 victory before more than 20,000 fans in Orlando, Fla.

Softball

The U.S. women, favored to win the gold in the first Olympic softball tournament, rolled to a 10-0 victory over Puerto Rico. The game was called due to the 10-run rule with the U.S. batting in the sixth inning.

Swimming

Tom Dolan gave the U.S. its first gold medal of the Olympics with a win in the 400-meter individual medley. Dolan, the world-record holder from Arlington, Va., captured the event with a time of 4 minutes, 14.90 seconds. Eric Namesnik of Butler, Pa., won the silver in 4:15.25.

A second gold for the Americans came from the men’s 800-meter freestyle relay team (7:14.84).

Amanda Beard, one of two 14-year-olds on the U.S. team, finished second in the 100-meter breaststroke.

Volleyball

With four starters making their Olympic debut, the U.S. men’s team overcame a ragged start to sweep Poland 15-13, 15-6 and 15-8 before a crowd of 14,200.

Water polo

The U.S., bouncing back from its opening-day loss to Italy, beat Greece 9-7 . Chris Humbert had four goals for the U.S., and Wolf Wigo added three.

Wrestling (Greco-Roman)

Dennis Hall of Stevens Point, Wis., was defeated by Yuri Melnichenko of Kazakhstan in the championship of the 125-1/2-pound class.