Tuesday 7 August 2012

Chris Hoy Is King At The Most Successful Olympics Since 1908

Sir Chris Hoy becomes Britain's greatest Olympian on the day where Team GB officially records it most successful Olympics since 1908. The Scot ends his Olympic career with his sixth gold medal in what has been a glittering time for Track Cycling.

Hoy took his record breaking gold came in the Men's Keirin in a breathtaking final. Hoy posted a time of 10.306 seconds to beat Germany's Maximilian Levy to his historic achievement. The final was also too close to call as two people, Simon Van Velthooven from New Zealand and Teun Mulder from the Netherlands, were awarded the bronze medal.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as good a send off for Victoria Pendleton who also ends her Olympic career, but with a silver instead of her intended gold. Pendleton breezed into the Women's Sprint final and faced her nemesis, Anna Meares of Australia. The first heat looked to have gone the way of Pendleton until the judges ruled she had illegally moved out of the lane and was duly relegated. Meares would then take the second heat to win gold ahead of the tearful Pendleton.

With Pendleton and Hoy retiring, the Track Cycling eventists would be forgiven for worrying about who would take over the mantle. But have no fear as 24-year old Jason Kenny lit up the Velodrome yesterday and Laura Trott did exactly the same today. 20-year old Trott became the first female cyclist to win two gold medals in a tournament after taking the Women's Omnium.

After three events yesterday, Trott was level with USA's Sarah Hammer going into today's events. Hammer then took a two point lead going into the final event, the Time Trial. Trott posted a time of 35.110 seconds while Hammer could only manage 35.900. This meant Trott won the event with Hammer finishing fourth, giving Trott her second gold medal. A tally which levels Beijing's four years ago.

Before all that, Team GB officially surpassed Beijing's gold medal haul with two other golds. It will be a happy Brownlee household tonight as both brothers came away with a medal in the Triathlon. Alistair Brownlee recorded a time of 1:46:25 to take the gold, finishing 11-seconds ahead of Spain's Javier Gomez. Jonathan Brownlee came home with the bronze, finishing 31-seconds behind his brother.

That was followed up with GB claiming their first ever Olympic medal in the Dressage event. Carl Hester, Laura Bechtol Scheimer and Charlotte Dujardin managed to hold off the Germans to take the gold medal. With the scores mightily close, Dujardin had to ride out a very good performance that would bring celebrations amongst the home crowd.

 Our final medal of the day came in the Men's RS-X Sailing event. Nick Dempsey managed to take silver in the event with he and gold medallist, Netherlands' Dorian Van Rijsselberge, finished nearly 20 points ahead of bronze medallist, Poland's Przemyslaw Miarczynski. This takes our medal haul to 48 with 22 of them being gold.  

We're still not done yet as there are two other boxers have also guaranteed themselves medals and will again find out which colour on Friday. Anthony Joshua beat China's Zhilei Zhang 15-10 yesterday in the Men's Super Heavy quarter finals. Joshua now faces Kazakhstan's Ivan Dychko in the semi-finals. Freddie Evans got through to the Men's Welter semi-finals after a close fought contest today. He faced Canada's Custio Clayton and the bout ended 14-14, but the judges voted in favour of Evans and he will now take on Ukraine's Taras Shelestyuk in the final four.







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