- 9 Sep 08, 03:38 PM
On a grey day in Beijing, the Great Britain Paralympic cycling team made it a "Tremendous Tuesday" with their six gold medals taking their total to nine, surpassing by one the Olympic team's standard.
Each of their five golds and one silver was loudly cheered on by the large group of British fans who made the long trip to the Laoshan Velodrome on a day when the weather was more Manchester than Mandarin.
As Darren Kenny, Rik Waddon, Mark Bristow, Jody Cundy, Simon Richardson and Aileen McGlynn and Ellen Hunter prepared for their turns on the track, their supporters were putting in their own final warm-ups in the stands of the humid arena, biting nails and frantically calculating split times and scenarios.
Once again, the impressive venue was full and the Chinese home crowd did their own bit to make their presence felt on an emotional and memorable day for British cycling.
Ten-year-old Brandon Kenny should have been at school in Dorset, but he will have some stories to tell his friends after his trip to Beijing to watch dad Darren in action.
The two-time Athens gold medallist goes in five events between the track and the road, and has two golds now safely secured, much to his family's delight.
Brandon and mum Maria missed the victory in Sunday's CP3 individual pursuit but they were cheering him on as he edged-out team-mate Rik Waddon in the 1km time-trial final.
"It's brilliant - I'm going to go and buy my dad a Superman t-shirt and I think he can now go and win five golds," he told BBC Radio 5 Live reporter Alison Curbishley afterwards.
Waddon's family and friends arrived at the track wearing t-shirts emblazoned with "Rik's Rowdy Roadies" on the front and his picture and "Go Nuts for Nat" on the back (a reference to Waddon's fiancé, swimmer Natalie Jones) and they also made their voices heard.
Last time I saw Jones, she was in tears after seeing her SM6 200m individual medley crown slip away from her on Sunday, thanks in part to losing her hat during the race before going on to win bronze.
She said she was "gutted" on Sunday but after a cup of hot chocolate and a good cry she was back to her usual bubbly self as she watched Waddon clinch silver behind Kenny.
Waddon was bitterly disappointed to have missed out on a place in the team for Athens four years ago and his achievements have put the pressure back on Jones at these Games.
"I've now got to match at least his silver medal or he is sleeping on the floor," she joked afterwards. "I've got two chances in the 50m fly on Saturday and then the 50m free on Monday.
"There is a good rivalry between us but it is a friendly rivalry. He is happy with his time and he did what he set out to do. I'm well proud of him."
Arguably the most memorable moment of the day came courtesy of Mark Bristow in the LC1 1km time-trial final.
Watched on by wife Patricia Fado and son Scott (8) and daughter Catherine (5), who travelled over from California where they are based, thanks to Mark's work in Sillicon Valley, he added to the gold rush.
Bristow went out as the fourth-last competitor, setting a world record on his run and when he knew he had secured his gold medal, the overjoyed 46-year-old dashed across the track and clambered up into the stand to embrace his family.
It was a moment of pure emotion that brought a tear to the eye.
"I haven't seen much of my family for the last 12 weeks while I've been training so what could I do but go and say thank you to them first," explained Bristow, a cousin of five-times world darts champion Eric Bristow.
"They deserve the medal more than I do for putting up without their dad for the whole summer.
"It's wonderful to have them over here. I will have a week off with them afterwards so we can see more of China.
"They are old enough now that they will remember this for the rest of their lives and I hope they will be proud of me. I am certainly proud of them."
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Comments
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congratulations to the Paralympic cyclists, however this isn't really a fair comparison. While they have won more medals, there are also a far greater number of events! Therefore as a percentage of golds to events our non-disabled cyclists have done as well or better!!!
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3 Paragraph should be Darren Kenny not Jason Kenny.
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dull piece
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This is a really poor piece of journalism. It's unfortunately typical of the sort of low quality coverage that the paralympics seems to engender.
The Olympics were fantastic, and the coverage matched it... great live feeds on the bbc site, stories breaking and top correspondents covering it in an intelligent manner. Mostly anyway.
The paralympics arrive and everything is shuffled off to one side of the bbc site - few lead stories focus on the paralympics, certianly not beyond a UK centric view. If football transfer gossip has a greater coverage than some of the most impressive sporting achievements this year then the BBC really has its head stuck up its posterior. The paralympics is every bit as important and special (in many ways more so?) as the olympics that preceded it and should be given the same quality of coverage.
But this piece is just a rank bit of journalism; few facts or details of the event, plenty of hyperbole about 'bubbly characters' and other subjective nonsense, and a couple of glaring factual errors. Elizabeth Hudson (such a high quality correspondent that she has a total of 3 articles published on the site) should really have bothered to read the Waddon family t-shirts, as the slogan she claims they bore (Riks Rowdy Rowdies) don't even make sense, let alone concur with the picture shown directly below of them all wearing the slogan "Riks Rowdy Roadies".
Come on - if you can't even write the piece accurately your editor should be able to spot such a simple error. it's all in all pretty disappointing, and unfortunately it DOES detract from the fantastic achievements of the athletes competing in Beijing.
Disappointing to say the least.
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electronicmath,
Thanks for your note, and the errors you point out have been fixed.
Elizabeth is at her second Paralympics, and works on our award-winning disability sport website year-round.
Her report from the velodrome is here, with all the facts and details you require:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/7605555.stm
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I look at the Medal table in disbelieve. Team GB are 6 golds ahead of the US, where I reside.
I suppose I should not really be surprised given that the Americans are only really interested in backing surefire 'winners' from the outset.
'Why would we fund 'em'........I heard someone say earlier..
I feel so sorry for the handicapped, the veterans and the ethnic groups in this country. A callous disregard.....
a dreadfully lost society is exposed again..
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Maybe Michael Vaughn could lead an Olympic cricket team in 2012 given he'll still have a central contract.....
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re. Martin Gough.
Thanks for addressing the factual errors, but you are somewhat missing the point of my post if that's all that has changed.
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I agree about the way the Paralympics has been shoved to the side but I also have an issue that I had with the Olympics as well.
When you are watching the coverage online (very useful, especially when you are at work) you might suddenly find out you're watching something that was on a few hours earlier. It's down as live, the race is comentated as live but funnily enough they swiftly then go straight to the medals, looking at the news pages you find out that was several hours ago as I found out today with the end of the cycling.
There was nothing to say this wasn't live, why can't there be a 'filmed earlier' tag on screen for this sort of coverage?
This is especially problematic when there are still other events going on so you're swinging from recorded earlier, to live, to recorded earlier again all with no notice.
I doubt this will be as much of an issue in London in 2012 but it's very very annoying!!
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I had the pleasure of being Jody Cundy's paralympic swim coach during Atlanta 96 when he won his first gold medal in the 100m Butterfly. He was a winner then and a winner no. Congratulations Jody.
I also had the pleasure of travelling with the team, including Sarah Bailey nee Storey, all over the world, What a great competitor and another winner.
I am just so proud of both of them to win gold after a successful transition from swimming to cycling.
Steve Rafferty
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With all respect to the first comment, I disagree.
You will find that Darren Kenny so far has done 3 events and won 3 gold medals.
And overall, the cycling team only missed a medal on 1 event with all medals won being gold and 1 silver.
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