The Australians have been making quite an impact at the Delhi Commonwealth Games.
Geoff Huegill, he made his spectacular comeback in the pool winning a silver medal in the event 50m butterfly. His road back to the swimming pool wasn’t an easy one. He retired from swimming in 2004, he relaxed out of his strict training and diet regime and he put on a fair bit of weight. In 2008 he announced he would be making his comeback to the sport and it was a battle for him to lose the weight. He had to discipline himself with his diet and intense training. It was reported that he had lost more than 40 kg (from 138kg) for his Delhi Commonwealth Games comeback. Geoff Huegill’s race was so close, it did look like he could have taken the gold, it was not neck and neck; it was more like fingernail and fingernail.
There has been a lot of drama at the games with a few Aussie athletes causing quite a stir by throwing a birdie (rude finger gesture) to the umpires/judges. Yesterday Sally Pearson was faced with every athlete’s nightmare; she was stripped of her gold medal in the 100m sprint event. Pearson was told of her disqualification hours after she did her celebratory victory lap. Her disqualified false start comes after a successful protest by the English team. Australia launched an appeal but it was rejected by the jury. England’s sprinter Laura Turner was disqualified due to her illegal start and it appeared Pearson had also jumped the starting gun. Awful outcome to Pearson’s fairytale win. She still has one more event to compete in the 100m hurdles, I hope she can triumph in it and take home her gold medal.
Medal Tally Update as of Friday 8th October:
The Australians are experiencing a gold rush at the games sweeping an incredible 32 gold medals so far and that puts them at the number 1 nation on the medal tally. A total of 70 medals have been won. The events that Aussies are dominating in include swimming and cycling.
India comes in at No 2. on the medal tally with 14 gold medals, England is third with 12 medals, then Canada with 11 medals.
Ref: SMH, APP
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