Wimbledon has a retractable
roof and so has some outdoor stadiums hosting various Sports events ! .. ..
today at Tokyo it rained, sort of heavily, the field was wet, yet some events
continued at Olympics 2020 placing the competitors in great jeopardy – in fact
saw some athletes slip, discuss throwers, slip or throw in wrong directions ! –
it all happened today out there ! – yet the games continued.
Discus thrower Kamalpreet
Kaur finished at the sixth position in her first Olympics with a best throw of
63.70m in a rain-interrupted final today (Monday 2nd Aug 2021). Kaur, 25, who had qualified for the final as
second best on Saturday, was never in the running for a medal in the six rounds
of competition which was interrupted by rain for more than an hour. After a
couple of rounds and more than a couple of falls, Women's Discus Throw got postponed because of
incessant rain. As many as four athletes slipped and failed
while trying to spin in order to gain momentum for their throw. Included among
them was USA's Valarie Allman who led the pack after one and a half rounds.
Rain played havoc and the wet conditions in the National Olympic Stadium
made life difficult for athletes in the
women's 400m hurdles as Sara Slott Petersen suffered a "horrible
fall". Torrential rain had led to field events inside the stadium being
postponed with athletes slipping in the discus.
But the track events continued as scheduled with the women's 400m
hurdles taking place. There was noticeably some standing water in the inside
lanes, while those on the outside lane had less bad weather to deal with at the
start of the race.
Norway's Amalie Luel was
lucky – she false
started in her semi final, but was allowed to join the restart as she
attributed the sound due to the rain, in
the first of three races. Janieve Russell made it back-to-back Olympic Games
finals after she placed second in her semifinals heat of the women's 400m
hurdles in rainy conditions on Monday. Russell, who was seventh in Rio five
years ago and won the Commonwealth Games title in 2018 in Australia, was in
third place after seven hurdles but separated herself from the field to finish
in 54.10 seconds behind defending champion Dalilah Muhammad of the United
States who won in 53.30 seconds. Paulien Coukuyt ran a Belgian national record
54.47 seconds for third.
The women's 400m hurdles,
like the men's equivalent, is one of the marquee events of the track and field
programme where it is expected that it will require a world record to take the
gold It has lived up to expectations with newly-minted world record holder
Sydney McLaughlin of the USA (53.03 seconds); Holland's Femke Bol (53.91
seconds); Gianna Woodruff, who ran a Panamanian national record 54.22 seconds;
and a third American, Anna Cockrell (54.17 seconds) all advancing as well. The
Finals will see : A. Ryzhykova (Ukraine); V. Tkachuk (Ukraine); Sydney McLaughlin(USA); F. Bol (Netherlands); J. Russell (Jamaica); D.
Muhammad (USA); A. Cockrell (USA)
competing for the medals.
Indian equestrian Fouaad
Mirza, who advanced to jumping finals of individual eventing at the Olympics,
finished 23rd in the final of Jumping (Individual) event. Earlier in the day, the Indian women’s hockey team made
history on Monday, the 10th day of the Tokyo Olympics as they beat Australia
1-0 in the quarterfinals. With that, India sealed their spot in the semifinals
for the first time in its Olympic history.
Indian women's hockey team goalkeeper Savita Punia revealed the speech
that she and her teammates got from national coach Sjoerd Marijne during their
quarterfinal match against Australia at Tokyo 2020. "The coach told us that it was a “Do or
Die” situation, we only have 60 minutes and this is either our first match or
the last," Savita Punia said.
Coming into the match, the odds were totally against India as in world
no.2 Australia, a mighty unbeaten opponent, awaited them. But the Indians,
determined to prove a point, produced a strong and brave performance to eke out
the narrow win over the Hockeyroos.
In the track field - Dutch
runner Sifan Hassan took a first, giant step in her bid for an unprecedented
Olympic treble when she sprinted to gold in the 5000m. Ethiopian-born Hassan,
28, produced a devastating final-lap sprint to time 14min 36.79sec. Kenya's
two-time world champion Hellen Obiri claimed silver in 14:38.36, with
Ethiopia's Gudaf Tsegay taking bronze with 14:38.87.
Any fears Hassan might
have to ride out tactics designed to thwart her from east African rivals
Ethiopia and Kenya came to nothing in a slow-paced race that ended with an
almighty bang that perfectly suited her explosive finishing skills. Hassan arrived in Tokyo aiming not just for
the 5000m, but also the 1500m and 10000m in an unprecedented tilt at
middle-distance dominance. She became the first athlete to achieve the 1500 and
10000m world double in Doha in 2019, an astonishing display given that it
coincided with a four-year ban handed down to her then coach Alberto Salazar,
the head of the now-disbanded Nike-funded Oregon Project.
The 5000m in Tokyo always
promised to be a potential banana skin. In Ethiopians Tsegay, Ejgayehu Taye and
Senbere Teferi, and Kenya's Obiri and Agnes Tirop, the entry list featured five
of the world's 10 fastest ever over the distance. But pace proved no problem
for Hassan, whose gold capped a remarkable day after she fell in her 1500m heat
in the morning session just 12 hours previously, but quickly got to her feet
and won.In the longer race, she was happy to bide her time, eventually moving
into the slipstream of the trio of Ethiopians, Obiri and Tirop, Kenyan-born
Turk Yasemin Can and Ethiopian-born Israel Selamawit Teferi.
It is all happening at
Tokyo Olympics 2020
2nd Aug 2021.
No comments:
Post a Comment