Day 1

DAY 1

THURSDAY  MORNING

 

The first sport out of the block was the class 3 wheelchair table tennis where German Swhmdbuger beat French man Guyan in straight sets.

 On the other channel there was cycling with the individual pursuit. I think television does so well because if you are actually at the event you would not see as much as you can from watching TV. 

I do think that having the top 2 racers racing for gold and 3^rd and 4^th racing for bronze from the heats to be unfair because if you race early you have a disadvantage because you do not know what time you have to beat.  

Sarah Story (team GB) got a world record in a qualifier in cycling and she goes into the gold medal race against Anna Herosiva.  Crystal Lane from GB is going into the bronze medal match against Fiona Sutherton.

In the swimming Jonathan Fox got a world record for Team GB.  

I do like all of the competitive nature of the races but as the races disability advantages were explained it confused me. I do find it to be very interesting how some of the racers are on the swimming blocks while others are in the water in the same race. I think they should all be in the water as that gives some an advantage.      

 I find interesting as to how they decide how a disability affects them in their sports. I also found it very interesting how the swimmers with no arms push themselves.    

In the wheelchair basketball the Spanish cruised to 67 points to 40 victories over the Italians Danny Rodreguez having a quality game. Spain won every quarter of the match.

 

AFTERNOON

 

I had a look at the Judo and I remembered the way from watching the Olympics  that they get their winners to be confusing and I still find it confusing.  Rhani Isimozof won his match due to a judge’s decision. LI Ja Dong went through to the semi final on an automatic win.  Ben Quilter is beaten by Anora an ipon which means one great throw on the back and you win the match. I do think that Judo can be very exciting.

 In the first of Great Britain’s wheelchair basketball matches they had their chances at least early in the first period but the game got away from them as the Dutch won by 62 points to 35 Amy Conroy was Britain’s star Von Vegan did well for the Dutch.     

The C1- C3 final time trial in cycling was very good even I watched it and I don’t normally watch this type of thing. There were about 3 world records all broken in this competition with Chinas Li Zuang Zu getting Gold, Britains Mark Lee Colbourne gettng silver and Tomas Graf from Germany getting bronze.

 

In the women’s cycling Alison Jones wins the bronze in C1-3 individual pursuit beating Denise Shindler. Simone Kennedy lost to S Zeng in the gold medal race

Alexander green won bronze in the C4 individual pursuit. Susan Powell beat Megan Fisher in the gold medal race.In the C5 individual pursuit bronze medal race Crystal Lane lost to Fiona Southorn. In the gold medal match Sarah Story Anna Harawaska.

 

James Brown from Portaferry competed in the 4k pursuit in the bronze medal match -  I was very disappointed for James as he lost his race by only 2 seconds to Miguel Angel Clamente Solano. First the Spanish were leading then the Irish pair seemed to gain a comfortable lead before the Spanish came back bit by bit to lead the NI rider. I was just gutted for him.

 

In Wheelchair Basketball the USA beat France in the first half. The French did try to come back in the third quarter but the USA were still too strong winning a tight one. The USA though did control the match for long periods and if the French want to win any medal they need to sort a lot out.

 

EVENING

 

We started with a world record in the men’s 100m S6 backstroke for Zheng from China , another Chinese man, Jia, took the silver and Iwanow, from Germany, got the bronze.

In the swimming the women’s 100 metre backstroke S6 was won by Lu Dong with no arms who was competing against the others with one or two arms. I find this incredible. Niri Kindrid of GB got a silver with a Dutch girl getting bronze.

 

They were also fighting for medals in the Judo today Ben Quilter managed to get a bronze and you can find other results somewhere else as it is impossible to do both the Judo and Swimming.

 

Tomorrow’s blog: Today I have put in a lot of detail to my blog, it might be too much. Tomorrow I will try to focus on my highlights of the day.

Every day I am going to have an athlete of the day. Today it is the swimmer Lu Dong who broke the world record.