Olympics: A day when 57 and 13-year-old stood tall on podium
Darpan News Desk IANS, 26 Jul, 2021 12:49 PM
okyo, July 26 (IANS) At Olympics, age is no restriction for achieving glory. Monday showed us that as a 57-year-old and a 13-year-old stood tall on the podium.
While Kuwait's Abdullah Al-Rashidi, who is 57, won a bronze medal in men's skeet event in the shooting competition, 13-year-old Momiji Nishiya became Japan's youngest gold medal winner when she won the women's street skateboarding competition.
Al-Rashidi was donning an Arsenal football team jersey as he won his second successive Olympic medal. It was his first medal for the country as the last time he won a medal, a bronze in Rio in 2016, it was as an independent competitor since the Kuwaiti Olympic body was banned by the International Olympic Committee.
Al-Rashidi, with his moustache and Arsenal jersey, had become quite popular with some Brazilian fans in the previous Olympic Games.
"I am so happy to see my Kuwaiti flag and second Olympic medal," Al-Rashidi told media after the skeet final. "I didn't like seeing the Olympic flag. I needed to see my flag, the Kuwaiti flag," he added.
If the Kuwaiti could keep his wits about him in his moment of glory with national flag, Momiji welled up in tears.
"I burst into tears because I was beyond happy," said the 13-year-old afterwards.
Momiji fell on her first two attempts in the best trick portion of the finals. But she bounced back to surge into lead.
"I didn't think I was going to be able to win, halfway through," she told broadcasters NHK later. "But the other skaters were encouraging me so I felt like I could go on."
On the back of her gruelling final match at the 21st Commonwealth Games (CWG), ace shuttler P.V. Sindhu says no loss is ever enough to stop her from believing in herself, and she is once again ready to roar.
Inside the shooting range, his confidence rivals a seasoned campaigner but the moment Anish Bhanwala steps out of it, he becomes the average 15-year-old worried about his maths exam.
The legendary coach, whose life story has achieved cult status owing to the success of ‘Dangal’, was here to watch defending gold-medallist Babita compete in the 53kg category.
Kidambi Srikanth has became the first Indian male shuttler to achieve the world number one ranking in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) chart released on Thursday.
Wrestler Sushil Kumar on Thursday dedicated his gold medal, which he won in the Commonwealth Games today, to the children who died in the accident in Himachal Pradesh.
