ATHENS, 25 September 2004 — China continued to strike gold yesterday at the Athens Paralympics, and has racked up more medals halfway through these Games — 30 gold, 80 overall — than during the entire Sydney Games in 2000.
Meanwhile, a Cuban judoka tested positive for banned substances and will be stripped of his gold medal in the third doping case since the start of the Games, organizers said.
Sergio Arturo Perez, who took gold in the men’s under 60 kilos category, will lose his medal but will otherwise receive only a “reprimand and a warning” because the banned drug — prednisolone — is not considered performance enhancing for judo, said International Paralympics Committee spokeswoman Miriam Wilkens. No gold will be attributed for this event, leaving Japanese Makoto Hirose with the silver.
Britain is holding steady in second place in the medals tally, with 22 gold and 51 overall, two-thirds of them won in swimming events. Australia, Ukraine and France, which slipped from third to fifth position, all have between 15 and 12 gold, and 54 to 43 medals overall.
Two thirds of China’s impressive haul has come in athletics and swimming, with additional strong showings in table tennis and “powerlifting,” the Paralympics equivalent of weightlifting, in which athletes compete lying down.
In the run up to the 2008 Olympic and Paralympics Games in Beijing, China has clearly made elite sports for the disabled a priority.
On track to come out on top of the medals table in Athens, China only finished sixth in gold medals and eighth overall at the Sydney Paralympics in 2000.
In athletics yesterday, Paralympics superstar and world record holder Marlon Shirley from the US eased to victory yesterday in a semifinal heat of the 100 meter sprint for single-leg amputees, setting up a marquee confrontation for today’s final.
Shirley’s teammate and long-time rival Brian Frasure also qualified, as did South African running sensation 17-year-old Oscar Pistorius, who devastated both Shirley and Frasure earlier in the 200 meter sprint in becoming the first amputee to run the distance in under 22 seconds.
“The 100 meter dash is going to be a really exciting race,” Shirley said, predicting that a new world record would be set.
Competition in three sports ended Thursday. In shooting, Sweden came out on top with 4 gold and 6 medals all told, followed by Korea with one gold and five medals, and Germany with one gold and four medals.
In wheelchair fencing, Hong Kong finished with a remarkable tally of eight gold medals and 14 overall, totally dominating the competition. France scored two gold and five overall, while Poland nabbed a single gold and 12 medals in total.
Finally, in the two sailing events at the Paralympics, France and Israel picked up a gold medal, with the Netherlands and the US each finishing with a silver and a bronze apiece. In women’s wheelchair basketball, one of the marquee sports of these Games, competition narrowed to the semifinal round.
