A glittering ceremony was yesterday to close the Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China, after 12 days of competition that showcased the sporting superstars of the future.
No official medals table is published for the multi-sports event, which focuses on a program promoting friendship and sportsmanship, rather than winning.
However, unofficial sources put China on top with 38 gold medals, followed by Russia with 27 and the US with 10. Tennis starlet Ye Shilin, 16, who is being tipped by state media to eclipse the achievements of 32-year-old double Grand Slam winner Li Na as China’s greatest player, won the girls’ singles.
Photo: Reuters
Another home-grown talent, 17-year-old Shen Duo, swept to six gold medals in the swimming pool, despite suffering from flu.
In table tennis — a sport long dominated by China — 17-year-old rising star Fan Zhendong claimed gold in both the boys’ singles and mixed team doubles events.
China also dominated the girls soccer, beating Venezuela 5-0 in the final on Wednesday evening.
Chinese basketball phenomenon Yao Ming — an eight-time NBA All-Star — made an appearance at the Games and backed the non-competitive emphasis, saying that events for young athletes should do “away with the results, the records, the medals.”
“Whatever you are and no matter what size you are, we are all members of a group,” Xinhua news agency quoted Yao — who is listed as 2.29m tall — as saying.
More than 3,700 competitors aged 15 to 18 took part, where golf and rugby, in the form of sevens, made their return to the Olympic fold, after gaps of 110 and 90 years respectively.
France won the boys’ rugby, while Australia won the girls’. Italy’s Renato Paratore won the boys’ golf, while South Korea’s Lee So-Young won the girls’ event and Sweden won the mixed team gold.
Competition ended on Wednesday and up to 2,000 performers were to close the Youth Olympics yesterday evening in a ceremony about “sharing youth, friendship, and touching moments,” according to the Web site of state broadcaster CCTV.
The only cloud over the event was cast by the west Africa Ebola virus outbreak, which prevented 25 athletes from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria from traveling to Nanjing.
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