New Zealand's Golden Run Continues
New Zealand's golden run at the Beijing Olympics has continued overnight, with board sailor Tom Ashley winning our third Gold medal so far.
Ashley went into the final race sitting tied for second with Great Britain, and only a couple of points behind France.
All he had to do was beat the French and British sailor's, and the Gold was his.
And that's exactly what he did.
Ashley finished the race in third place, behind Hong Kong and Israel, but was two places in front of the French guy - who had to settle for the Silver. The Israeli sailor managed to gain enough points to take out the Bronze medal, leaving the Brit to wonder what could have been.
It's another fantastic result for New Zealand, who haven't won a Gold medal in sailing since Barbara Kendall in 1992. She, incidentally, finished sixth overall in the women's board sailing.
New Zealand has also picked up three Bronze medals since 'Super Saturday'.
Haydon Roulston, Sam Bewley, Marc Ryan and Jesse Sergeant took out the Cycling team pursuit, beating the Aussie boys by 1.23 seconds. The great news for our cyclists is that they are still very young, and will be a real threat to the British team in 2012.
Bevan Docherty won the Bronze in the triathlon, sticking with the leaders for the entire run - and when the time came to sprint for the finish line, only the German and Canadian bolted ahead of him.
It's a great result for Docherty, in what is one of the most grueling events at the Olympic games.
Nick Willis won the Bronze in the men's 1500m, in what was an absolutely incredible race. When you consider that we haven't won a medal in that event since John Walker, Willis' Bronze is an absolutely fantastic result.
So now New Zealand has nine medals, in what is undoubtedly our greatest Olympics ever - and we still have a chance in the BMX racing, with Sarah Walker standing a great chance to win Gold, as is Marc Willers.
It would be great to win a couple more medals before the games finish up, but if we finish on nine we can still be extremely proud of our teams performances.
Well done guys!
Post a Comment