Beijing - Argentina won the Olympic football tournament on Saturday. Russia moved into third place in the medals table with two more golds while Germany suffered rowing disappointment after winning the women's mountain bike competition. Benfica winger Angel Di Maria scored the only goal of the game as Argentina beat Nigeria to defend their Olympic football title.
Playing in sweltering midday conditions in front of a near- capacity 89,000 crowd in the Bird's Nest stadium, Di Maria scored in the 58th minute, chipping goalkeeper Ambrose Vanzekin after running onto a Lionel Messi pass.
France's Julien Absalon won the men's mountain bike and Sabine Spitz of Germany was in a class of her own as she captured gold in the women's mountain bike event.
Spitz, 36, cycled away from her rivals early in the 27-kilometre course and had enough time to carry her bike across the finish line in delight.
But German joy turned to disappointment in the canoe/kayak competition as it failed to win a single race on a day in which China took an unexpected gold.
The two gold, two silver and three bronze medals Germany secured on the two days in the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park, was the poorest result it had achieved in the sport since competing as a unified nation at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
Meng Guanliang and Yang Wenjun were very popular winners in the K2 500m division, just ahead of Russians Sergey Ulegin and Alexander Kostoglod in a photo finish.
Germans Christian Gille and Tomasz Wylenzek took the bronze in another photo finish, just edging out the Belarussian duo by 0.032 seconds.
In the women's K2 over 500m Germany's Fanny Fischer and Nicole Reinhardt left their surge forward until too late as Hungarians Katalin Kovacs and Natasa Janic won gold in a time of one minute 41,308 seconds.
In the K1 500m, Ken Wallace of Australia took gold in the men's event while Inna Osypenko-Radomska of Ukraine prevailed in the women's race.
Spain's Saul Craviotto and Carlos Perez just about held on to win the men's K2 500m race ahead of Ronald Rauhe and Tim Weiskotter of Germany.
Earlier, Russia's Maxim Opalev won the men's C1 500m canoe race as Russia swept into third place ahead of Great Britain in the medals table.
Its synchronized swimming team took gold ahead of Spain although it suffered disappointment in handball losing out in the final to Norway.
Ukrainian weightlifter Igor Razoronov became the sixth doping case of these Games testing positive for steroids and a boxing scandal erupted with the International Boxing Association (AIBA) head Wu Ching-Kuo alleging that an official charged with referee selection procedures tried to influence bout officials.
AIBA technical delegate Rodel Obreja of Romania had said Friday that AIBA officials tried to manipulate the assignment of referees and judges.
But Obreja himself has been suspended from his job by the AIBA because he had talked about an ongoing investigation and Wu said that the Romanian was at the centre of the investigation.
