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
NO HARD FEELINGS: Taiwan’s Lin Hsiang-ti and Indonesia’s Dhinda Amartya Pratiwi embraced after fighting to a tense and rare 30-29 final game in their Uber Cup match The Taiwanese men’s team on Wednesday fought back from the brink of elimination to defeat Denmark in Group C and advance to the quarter-finals of the Thomas Cup, while the women’s team were to face South Korea after press time last night in the Uber Cup quarter-finals in Horsens, Denmark. In the first match, Taiwan’s top shuttler Chou Tien-chen faced a familiar opponent in world No. 3 Anders Antonsen. It was their 16th head-to-head matchup, with the Dane taking his fourth victory in a row against former world No. 2 Chou, winning 21-14, 13-21, 21-15 in 1 hour, 22 minutes. The
Marta Kostyuk’s maiden WTA 1000 title in Madrid came on Saturday thanks to her power, poise and a pair of unexpected lucky shorts. The world No. 23 beat eighth-ranked Mirra Andreeva 6-3, 7-5 in under 90 minutes to secure the most prestigious trophy of her career, her third professional singles title and second in less than a month after Rouen. Yet as the 23-year-old Ukrainian posed for photographs at the Caja Magica, it was not just the silverware that caught the eye. Held alongside her team and her two dogs, Kostyuk showed off a piece of black men’s underwear, prompting
Throwing more than US$5 billion at a divisive new tour and walking away after five seasons does not look like good business, but LIV Golf was not all bad news for Saudi Arabia. Oil-funded LIV, which poached top stars and sent golf’s establishment into a tailspin, helped push the conservative kingdom into global view — one of its key aims, experts said. The exit, confirmed on Thursday after weeks of speculation, does not signal a flight of Saudi money from sport, even after the Middle East war that sparked Iranian attacks around the Gulf, they said. “Saudi Arabia is not
Kite-surfing fabrics, car tires and shortened shoelaces helped Kenyan Sabastian Sawe and Adidas crack the two-hour marathon barrier. When Sawe on Sunday shattered one of athletics’ most elusive barriers in storming to victory at the London Marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 30 seconds, it did not come from just physiology and grit, but from design choices drawn from far beyond the course. Sawe debuted Adidas’ lightest-ever racing shoe, the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3. “It starts with the mentality of the athlete, the coach, and the team behind the product, which is: What can we do better? What is the 1 percent
RSS