And the race for gold is on....

It was an ugly start for the US v. the Czech Republic, but a time out and some subbing got the team on track and they rolled to a 97-57 victory.

Sylvia showed what she can do (7/9 and 14rbs), Kara provided a spark, Diana led all scorers (17pts), and the "subs" played a lot of minutes.

Anne Donovan from USABasketball's Additional Quotes:

Glad to get the first one under our belts. We definitely didn’t start off the way we wanted to. But everything, like Diana said, is not going to go your way, and things are going to happen and how you respond. We came out of the timeout and responded immediately, didn’t waste any time at all. At this stage of the game, I think we have 10 days in together, those kind of things really please the coach, to see that they’re still responsive, they’re making adjustments on the fly.

President Bush attended, as did the USA men's team (for the entire game).

SI.com on "Lessons learned from U.S.'s big win."