Hannah Cockroft and Nick Mayhugh yesterday enjoyed yet more golden success on the athletics track as the successful staging of the Paralympics Games was lauded as “remarkable” on the penultimate day in Tokyo, while Taiwan’s participation ended, leaving the nation with a solitary medal.
Britain’s Cockroft won her seventh Paralympics gold, while Mayhugh of the US said he wanted to be the “Usain Bolt of the Paralympics” after claiming his third Tokyo gold.
“Hurricane Hannah” clocked 1 minute, 48.99 seconds in the T34 800m, obliterating her own Paralympic Games record set in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 by almost 12 seconds.
Photo courtesy of the Sports Administration
“I don’t think it will ever sink in,” Cockroft said of winning her second Tokyo gold to go with her three golds at Rio and two from London in 2012. “Not many athletes get the privilege of doing this for 10 years or get to stand on the podium that many times.”
Mayhugh smashed his own world record, set only the day before, to take gold in the men’s T37 200m in 21.91 seconds.
“I know I’ll never be able to run 9.5 for the 100m, but I want to be the Usain Bolt of the Paralympics,” said the former soccer player, who also took gold in the 100m and Friday’s night’s 4x100m universal relay.
Photo: Reuters
He won silver in the 400m event.
“You set your own limits. You believe in yourself and you set your own barrier and surpass it. Usain Bolt did exactly that with me. He was my greatest inspiration, so thank you to him.”
International Paralympic Committee spokesperson Craig Spence hailed “an amazing team effort” that had enabled the Games to take place amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s remarkable. There were doubts in the past two years when I thought these Games weren’t going to happen,” Spence told reporters. “We took inspiration from our athletes. They seem to make the impossible possible. The sporting performances have been out of this world.”
However, Peter Genyn of Belgium said that his wheelchair had been sabotaged and had to be patched up with duct tape before he won the T51 100m late on Friday.
“We had just arrived 45 minutes before the warm-up and we had three flat tires and a broken compensator,” Genyn said. “The day before we had a flat front tire, and it looked like a knife, but we didn’t want to believe it.”
Cheah Liek Hou of Malaysia won the first Paralympics badminton gold in history when he beat Indonesia’s Dheva Anrimusthi 21-17, 21-15 in the men’s singles SU5 final at the Yoyogi National Stadium.
The sport is making its Paralympic Games debut in Tokyo, 29 years after being admitted to the Olympics.
Taiwan’s Fang Jen-yu was defeated twice yesterday, wrapping up Taiwan’s campaign at the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
In his first match, Fang lost to Cheah in the semi-finals 21-15, 10-21, 16-21.
In the bronze-medal match against world No. 3 Suryo Nugroho of Indonesia, he went down 16-21, 9-21.
Fang told reporters after the matches that he still has much to learn, including from the sophisticated and skillful way his two opponents played.
He said he is happy to have been able to compete in Tokyo and hopes to win a medal at a major event.
Fang was the last of the 10 Taiwanese at the Games, which is to have its closing ceremony today.
Taiwan won one medal, a bronze to table tennis player Tien Shiau-wen in the women’s class 10 event.
Additional reporting by staff writer and CNA
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
RSS