Italy's Ivano Brugnetti sped away from Spain's Francisco Fernandez in the final 400 meters of the Olympic Games men's 20km walk to clinch the gold medal in a personal best 1hr 19mins 40sec yesterday.
Fernandez, second in last year's World Championships, had to settle for the silver again, coming home five seconds behind the 1999 50km world champion.
PHOTO: AFP
"I knew if it came down to a race in the last kilometer between myself and Fernandez that I would win, because he's weak mentally," boasted Brugnetti.
PHOTO: DPA
Brugnetti was always confident he was going to get on the medal podium, the only question was where.
"I knew I had a medal in my legs. The only thing I didn't think was possible was the gold. I thought that was going to go to Jefferson Perez [Ecuador's 1996 Olympic champion who finished fourth here]. I don't know what happened to him."
Despite having been world champion five years ago over 50km, it is only in the last 18 months that Brugnetti has felt he has found the distance that really suited him.
"It's been four difficult years since I failed to finish the 50km walk in Sydney. I have not finished a race over that distance since, and so I decided to concentrate on the 20km last year. Obviously, it's completely changed me."
Fernandez crossed the finish line with tears in his eyes.
"This is very emotional. My long-time coach died in April, this is for him," said Fernandez, who raced with a black ribbon on his vest in memory of his mentor.
Australia's Nathan Deakes hung on for the bronze medal in 1:20.02, after losing contact with the leading pair two kilometers from the finish.
Four for Phelps
American swimmer Michael Phelps added a fourth Olympic gold at the Athens Games on Thursday with a comfortable victory in the 200 meters medley that kept him on course for a record eight medals.
Two earlier golds in the pool raised the US's haul to 13, one gold behind China in the overall medals race.
Nineteen-year-old Phelps led from the start and finished almost a body length ahead of compatriot Ryan Lochte. With two bronze also won, he could be the first swimmer to win eight medals at a single Olympics, equalling a record for all sports.
victory restored
Team mate Aaron Peirsol was dramatically stripped of his gold in the men's 200 backstroke because of an alleged illegal turn. But the victory was quickly restored on appeal and Austria's Markus Rogan had to be content with his silver.
American world champion and world record holder Amanda Beard seized the top honors in the 200 meter breast stroke.
China's shrinking medals lead was defended by weightlifting phenomenon Liu Chunhong, also 19, who took the title and set a world record in the women's 69kg class with lifts totalling 275kg, giving China its fourth weightlifting gold of the Games.
Zhang Jun and Gao Ling of China tossed another gold onto China's pile at the mixed doubles badminton and Zhang Ning grab-bed gold in individual competition:
Bomb hoax
Outside the arenas on Day Six, the Games of the 28th Olympiad was annoyed by a bomb hoax and buffeted by Middle East politics.
Olympic officials backed away from sanctioning Iran for its judo world champion's failure to fight an Israeli and five new doping cases in weightlifting were reported.
World weightlifting officials said seven lifters from Morocco, Moldova, Hungary, India, Turkey and Myanmar had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in pre-Olympics tests and had been kept out of the Games.
Iran had publicly boasted that its judo world champion Arash Miresmaeili -- disqualified for showing up over the maximum weight -- was told not to go to the mat with Ehud Vaks on Sunday because of Tehran's political boycott of Israel.
But the International Judo Federation (IJF) said that after investigation it had determined that it was not politics that kept Miresmaeili from fighting Vaks, but a digestive problem. He was fully 5kg over the 66kg limit at the weigh-in.
Anarchists claimed responsibility for a bomb threat at the Greek Athletics Federation's headquarters, but police said they found only a bag filled with minced meat and syringes.
Judo supremacy
Noriko Anno landed a record sixth judo gold medal for Japan and Manfred Kurzer of Germany won gold in probably the last Olympic 10 meter running target shoot. The event is being axed as part of a drive to trim the Olympics.
In an unseemly row in a gentlemanly sport, France, Britain and the US challenged Germany's gold medal in the equestrian team three-day event.
The three, dropped a peg by Germany's gold, said they were united in an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Basketball
The US finally showed signs of coming together as a team but still needed a late surge to beat Australia 89-79 in the men's Olympic basketball tournament on Thursday.
Unbeaten Spain became the first country to clinch a playoff berth with a come-from-behind 71-63 win over Italy, and Lithuania became the second with a 98-76 victory over Greece.
In other play, a dunk by Sean Marks in the dying seconds powered New Zealand to a 90-87 win over world champions Serbia and Montenegro.
Puerto Rico edged Angola 83-80 and Argentina pressured China into committing 23 turnovers to make Yao Ming a non-factor in an 82-57 pasting of the Asian champions.
Tennis great tumbles
Gold medal favorite Carlos Moya joined the exodus of big name tennis players from the Olympics on Thursday, crumbling in the men's quarterfinals against Chile's Nicolas Massu.
With world numbers one and two Roger Federer and Andy Roddick already ousted from the Athens Games, third seed Moya was tipped for the title but the Spaniard was out-gunned 6-2 7-5 by an effervescent Massu.
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