Saturday was a golden day for New Zealand at the Beijing Olympics. New Zealanders won two gold medals, a silver and two bronze medals.
The first medal was won by the rowing twins, Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell. This is their second Olympics gold medal; they won in Athens also. Recently though, at the World Games in Poland, they didn’t get into the finals so it was wonderful to see them back to their old form. It was a very close finish and both New Zealand and the German team did not know who had won. They had to wait for the photo-finish results to see that New Zealand had won by only 0.01 of a second.
A short time after that Hayden Roulston won a silver medal in the track cycling. Two other rowing teams won bronze: Mahe Drysdale in the single sculls and George Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle in the pairs.. Mahe had a tummy bug most of last week. He vomited and had diarrhoea for several days and lost weight. When he finished his race, he vomited and collapsed from exhaustion. He had been the favourite to win a gold medal so that was very disappointing for him.
Then around 3am New Zealand time on Sunday, Valerie Vili won the shot put with a throw of 20.56m. This was a personal best for Valerie and it was on her first throw. After that, all her throws were over 20m. Only one other competitor managed a throw of more than 20m – the woman from Belarus had one throw of 20.28m.
The Olympic Games is not finished for New Zealand yet. We still have good sailors in yacht races and Barbara Kendall in the board sailing. And who knows what other people may win. |