Kirdyapkin Walks To Gold In Olympic Record Time : USA Smash World Record To Win Women’s 4×100m Relay : Rovers Boss Kean Told ‘Lose 3 Games And You’re Out’ : aforadio.com
Posted in Sports on 12. Aug, 2012
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Kirdyapkin Walks To Gold In Olympic Record Time
The 32-year-old double world champion shaved more than a second off Alex Schwazer’s record of 3:37:09 to finish 54 seconds ahead of Australia’s Jared Tallent, whose time was also inside the previous Olympic record and a personal best.
“Around the 25-30km mark I hit the wall. I had to fight with myself but I found my second wind. If I didn’t have that small problem I would have done a better time,” said Kirdyapkin, who did not finish the 50km event in Beijing four years ago.
China’s Si Tianfeng, 28, won bronze in a personal best of 3:37:16, adding to Chen Ding’s 20km gold and Wang Zhen’s bronze a week ago – China’s first men’s race walk medals.
The Russian trio of Kirdyapkin, Igor Erokhin and last year’s world champion Sergey Bakulin were strong medal favourites after Italy’s defending champion Schwazer was excluded from the London Games on Monday for testing positive for EPO.
They were front runners from the start of the 25-lap race, which passed London’s Buckingham Palace, and with 10km to go were leading after reeling in Si who had broken away to an 18-second lead.
Si’s injection of pace into the race had tired both Erokhin and Bakulin, though, and with another push the Chinese moved back into second behind a determined-looking Kirdyapkin, who kept up a solid pace in the sunshine.
With 30 minutes to go before the finish Tallent, whose wife Claire will compete in the women’s 20km race walk on Saturday, made his move on Si to take second but was unable to get close to the Russian leader.
It was Tallent’s second consecutive Olympic silver medal in the event and adds to the 20km bronze he also won in Beijing.
“I gave it all I could in the last 10km, I came home as hard as I could but I just couldn’t catch Kirdyapkin, he’s a true champion. He’s won two world championships, one world cup and now the Olympic gold medal,” the 27-year-old said.
“I don’t think I could have done anything else. I came home as hard as I could, 42 minutes for the last 10km, I don’t think I could have done much more.”
Before Saturday’s race Kirdyapkin had already set this year’s leading time (3:38:08) when he won the 2012 World Race Walking Cup in May.
Ireland’s Robert Heffernan set a national record time to finish fourth ahead of Erokhin and Bakulin after an impressive late surge through the field.
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USA Smash World Record To Win Women’s 4×100m Relay
Bungled handovers had denied the Americans gold at the last three Games but there were to be no mistakes on a balmy London night as the Americans added the Olympic crown to the world title they won last year.
Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight and Carmelita Jeter functioned like a well-oiled machine in overdrive to win comfortably and beat the world mark of 41.37 set by East Germany in 1985.
The Jamaican team, led off by 100 metres individual champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, won silver in 41.41 seconds and the bronze went to Ukraine in 42.04 seconds, both countries setting national records in the process.
Jeter, the second fastest woman of all time over 100 metres, took the baton from Knight with a three-metre lead over the Jamaicans and extended it to five as she powered towards the line to claim her first Olympic gold.
The 32-year-old, runner-up in the 100 and bronze medallist in the 200, had time to look across and point at the trackside scoreboard as she crossed the line, giving a loud yell as she realised the record had fallen.
“I knew that we were moving, I knew we were running very well and I was so excited,” she told reporters.
“It feels great. Everyone ran a credible leg and we were able to get the stick around, and we got the gold medal and the world record.”
Silke Gladisch-Moeller, Sabine Rieger, Ingrid Auerswald-Lange and Marlies Goehr had set the old mark in Canberra and, although discredited to some by evidence of systematic doping in East Germany, it stood for more than a quarter of a century.
Felix, who ended her quest for an individual gold by winning the 200m in London, said the American team had been bursting with confidence ahead of the race.
“It is a relief, it is a joy. it is everything,” she said. “It is the most comfortable that I have seen this team. We were laughing, we were smiling … we have never been like that.
“I think it was a combination of practice and we were comfortable with each other. Then just the speed. Everyone was having fabulous years.”
Veronica Campbell-Brown ran the third leg for Jamaica between Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart to clinch her seventh Olympic medal.
“I am happy for the U.S. girls,” she said. “They broke the record, that is good. I feel good as a woman, I feel females don’t get as much respect as their male counterparts.
“We need to get more records. It was an excellent run by the USA … the result was phenomenal.”
Olesya Povh, Hrystyna Stuy, Mariya Ryemyen and Elizaveta Bryzgina combined to finish third for Ukraine and claim bronze.
“We felt really strong out there,” said Povh. “We were willing ourselves to win. Bronze is great, but of course we wanted to hear our national anthem.”
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Rovers Boss Kean Told ‘Lose Three Games And You’re Out’
The Championship club’s global advisor Shebby Singh made the claim at an open forum of fans addressing the Blackburn Rovers Action Group.
Blackburn are aiming to return to the top flight at the first attempt having been relegated from the Premier League in May.
“I am here to be successful and I know what it needs to get out of the Championship and so far nobody has disagreed with me at the club,” said Singh.
“The owners have said to me do what you are doing, continue doing it – the manager has not said to me we should have signed so-and-so, or we don’t need so-and-so.
“For me, it is all about results. For me, after three games if we have dropped nine points, we would quite literally only have a 50 per cent chance of getting promoted, so everyone has to start from day one.”
Asked if he would chop Kean, he replied “If we lost three games on the trot, definitely. Yes.”
