MARK ROHAN. PARALYMPIC champion. The 31-year-old secured his country’s sixth gold medal of these extraordinary Games with a sensational performance in the handcycling time trial.
And that wasn’t all.
The Tandem teams of James Brown and Damien Shaw, and Catherine Walsh and Fran Meehan, secured bronze medals in the men’s and women’s road cycling at Brands Hatch.
What we learned today
- Mark Rohan was a superstar before taking gold in this afternoon’s Men’s Individual H1 Time Trial, so what must he be now?
“I’m overwhelmed to be honest,” he said. “I’m just so happy for the whole team, and the whole country, I’m just delighted to be able to give back to them. There was a lot of expectation on myself, on current form, to deliver a medal so it’s really special to bring a gold home.”
- As for Catherine Walsh and Fran Meehan – they celebrated their second medals of the Games, but their success came as no great surprise to the former…
“Months ago I said to Fran that we could actually get two medals out there, we’re consistently good at the time trial as well. We didn’t go too crazy or hyper over it – we got the rest in, just warmed up today and felt good, said let’s go and, well, we did. I’m delighted,” said Walsh.
Wheelchair rugby – or Murderball to give it its technical term – can be quite brutal:
An old friend we bumped into today: Alex Zanardi
Alessandro Zanardi was a Formula 1 driver for both Minardi and Lotus who had to have both of his legs amputated after a horrific crash in 2001.
The Italian is back – he won again at a motor racing circuit by taking gold in the men’s individual H4 (hand-cycle) time-trial.
Other news from Team Ireland
In the Irish sailing team, John Twomey, Anthony Hegarty and Ian Costelloe finished 10th in the three person keelboat (sonar) race in Weymouth and Portland.
This was the 10th race of the competition, with the trio currently placed in 11th position overall.
Meanwhile, in the Boccia, Tom Leahy was runner-up to Portuguese player Abilio Valente 6-1 in the BC3 Mixed Individual competition.
The daily Oscar Pistorius update
The South African has qualified for the men’s 100m T44 final after winning his heat in the qualifiers on Wednesday evening.
Pistorius won Heat 2 in a time of 11.18 seconds – a season best time for him. He is expected to face his old friend Alan Oliveira of Brazil in Thursday night’s final.
You said what?
“I’m Alex Zanardi. I always have to come up with something. I have a little bit of a big head. It’s an amazing feeling, I’m really, really happy for the result.”
(Not quite) Hero of the day
The Conservative government have come in for an awful time at the Games. Not only do they have to face the boos of certain sections of the Olympic Stadium crowd, any cheers they hear are for the hecklers and not for them (according to C4′s humorous ‘The Last Leg’ programme).
It seems, though, that their former fearless leader could have stopped the rot.
Reports that it was actually his Spitting Image dummy are as yet unconfirmed.
Medal table as of 20.55, September 5th
