Thousands of athletes said goodbye to Los Angeles on Sunday in an emotional closing ceremony for the Special Olympics marked by cheers and tears.
After more than a week of games, athletes from more than 160 countries marched into the Memorial Coliseum on a giant red carpet to applause and praise for their efforts.
About 6,500 athletes took part in contests ranging from weightlifting to soccer. Although not everyone won gold, silver or bronze medals, every competitor received a performance ribbon and a chance to take to the victory stand following their competition. An estimated 500,000 people turned out to watch at venues in and around Los Angeles.
A Twitter posting from Los Angeles police headquarters thanked the athletes “for inspiring us & showing what true strength is.”
“These games have been an unprecedented experience for Special Olympics and for the cause of bringing athletes with intellectual disabilities into the mainstream,” said Jan Palchikoff, a former Olympic rower and a Special Olympics executive.
“This has been a great showcase of their abilities and a way to move forward,” Palchikoff said.
The Special Olympics flag was lowered and presented to a delegation from Austria, where the Winter Games is to be held in 2017.
A five-minute video showed highlights of the competitions and a flame that was lit in the Coliseum’s cauldron during the opening ceremony was extinguished.
“My first visit to LA, but not my last. Definitely looking forward to coming back,” Icelandic soccer player Thor Haklidason said before the closing event.
“It’s truly been an unbelievable experience and a great time,” he said, adding that people from all over southern California have embraced him and his teammates everywhere they have been.
Jamaica’s Kirk Wint waved to the crowd as he stepped out of his wheelchair and into the starting block for his 50m race last week. He propelled himself down the track with the use of his hands because he is unable to stand. He finished fourth.
In the 100m competition, Olivia Quigley of Brookfield, Wisconsin, ran with a red, white and blue scarf over her bald head and finished first in her division. Quigley, who has been undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, is scheduled for surgery soon.
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