ITS SHOOTERS, DIVERS, table tennis players and cyclists have kept China atop the gold medal-winners chart at the Paris Games and now 20K racewalker Jiayu Yang has given her nation further golden impetus.
The women’s walk that followed the men’s on the same route in steamy conditions was a virtual walkaway. The 28-year-old champion, 12th-placer at the 2021 Games, may have been 44th of 45 on the alphabetic start list but once the pack reached 5K, she was off on her own.
She’d come to Paris with the 1:26:07 world lead and was 13 seconds quicker here, crossing the line in 1:25:54.
Once Yang broke free, the only real questions were: (a) would she tire? (b) could Spain’s Budapest23 world champion, Mária Pérez, dig down for an incredible finish?
The answers were (a) no, (b) no.
“Tokyo [in fact, the ’21 race was held in Sapporo, well north of the Japanese capital] was very tricky for me, so I worked very hard to come back and get the best results in Paris,” said the Olympic champion.
In the process, she fulfilled a promise made to her father before he passed away in 2015.
“I never mentioned this before,” she said after the big win. “But I promised him I would win gold. Now I have finally done it, I am very proud of myself.”
Pérez would settle for the silver medal in 1:26:19, with the bronze going to Australia’s ultra-consistent Jemima Montag in an Oceania Area record of 1:26:25.
Said the delighted Montag: “It was hot, it was loud, the crowd was going absolutely crazy. I just kept competing, ‘One more lap, one more lap.’“
After Ecuador’s Brian Daniel Pintado won the men’s race, Peru’s Kimberly García, the ’22 world champion, became the top hope for South America hitting the continental daily double, but that wasn’t about to happen either. She was pushed back to 16th in 1:30:10, while the fourth spot thus went to Colombia’s Lorena Arenas in 1:27:03.
Once again, the most decorated athlete on the starting line (and one of the most decorated in the Games) was China’s 37-year-old Hong Liu. She’d won the 2012 London Olympic silver, and the 2016 Rio gold. The years are rushing by but Liu is still quite competitive with the kids — 21st in 1:31:24.
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