Partially sighted Irish sprinter Jason Smyth is used to being top dog at the Paralympics but now feels more than ready to mix with elite athletes on the world’s biggest stages.
The determined 23-year-old, the first Paralympian to compete at a European championships, produced a storming run on Tuesday at a breezy Olympic Stadium in Barcelona to qualify for yesterday’s semi-finals of the 100m.
Smyth ran 10.43 seconds, compared with a personal best of 10.32, in the same heat as Frenchman Christophe Lemaitre, the fastest European this year after setting a national record of 9.98 at the French championships this month.
“When you come here and compete against guys who’ve run 9.9 you’re worried about getting destroyed,” Smyth told reporters in the bowels of the stadium, built for the 1992 Olympics.
“In the Paralympics you’re No. 1 and expected to win, but here the competition is a lot harder and you get away with very little,” he said. “But it does give you confidence competing against athletes of this quality and competing well. I definitely believe I belong here with these guys.”
Smyth, gold medalist in the 100m and 200m at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, suffers from Stargardt’s disease, a disorder that has reduced his vision to about 10 percent of that of a fully sighted person.
Despite attracting little sponsorship, he has managed to fund trips to train in Florida at the base used by US former world champion Tyson Gay and is aiming to compete at both the Olympics and Paralympics in London in 2012.
He said he had received a lot of attention in the Catalan capital this week but was not letting it distract him from the task in hand.
“I’ve done a lot of interviews but I’m generally quite laid back and don’t get too stressed,” he said.
Asked about his chances of making it through to yesterday’s 100m final, he added: “I wouldn’t want to say yes. It’s a very outside chance but you never know what can happen. I’ll see if I can step up another level and compete.”
“Jason, you are a credit to all your family, but your best talent is your humility not your running,” his grandfather told the European Athletic Association.
“For this reason you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams. You make us all so proud that you have never lost the common touch, and your feet are firmly on the ground.”
Also See: Golden Brit breaks Spanish hearts
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier