ATHENS, 27 September 2004 — Japan scored a triple victory in the marathon at the Athens Paralympics yesterday, taking two golds in four wheelchair events, and winning one of two marathons for the sight-impaired.
Wheelchair virtuoso Toshihiro Takada crossed the finish line first in the T52 class, for athletes with nearly normal upper body abilities but no trunk or leg function, in 2 hours and 2 seconds, beating out the world record holder Thomas Geierspichler of Austria by six minutes.
“I thought I was second,” said Takada, confused by the simultaneous arrival of athletes competing to other disability classifications. “It took me a while to realize I had won,” he said.
Kazu Hatanaka, 35, won the one-and-only women’s wheelchair marathon in 1:49:26 (1 hour and 49 minutes and 29 seconds), just 11 seconds ahead of teammate and silver medalist Wakako Tsuchida. Both athletes competed in the T54 class for competitors with normal arm, leg and trunk function but limited or no use of the legs.
And in the T11 classification for the totally blind, Yuichi Takahashi, 39, cruised to victory in the men’s marathon in 2:44:24, 44 seconds ahead of second place finisher Carlos Ferreira of Portugal.
Takada, 39, also stuck gold in the 5,000 and 400 meters races, as well as bronze in the 1,500. It is highly unusual — in both disabled or able-bodied athletics — for a single athlete to excel at short, medium and marathon distances.
The T54 mens’s wheelchair marathon was won by Kurt Fearnley of Australia in 1:25:37, with the silver going to Canada and the bronze to Poland. In the T51 category — the highest degree of disability in wheelchair athletics, with no trunk or leg functions and inability to move fingers — Alvise de Silva of Italy prevailed in 2:53:38 seconds.
In the sixth and final marathon, the T13 class for the sight-impaired, Ildar Pomykalov of Russia took the gold in 2:38:45.
The Japanese victories capped a day of strong performances for Asian athletes yesterday.
Shingo Kunieda and Satoshi Saida scored Japan’s first-ever medal in wheelchair tennis in the men’s open double final, crushing the French silver medalists by a score of 6-1, 6-2. Meanwhile, China continued its inexorable march toward overall victory in these Games, racking up a total as of yesterday morning of 45 gold medals and 110 medals overall. Second place Britain, by comparison, has 28 gold and 71 overall. Korea managed to move a couple of notches up the medals ladder after a strong showing Saturday from its archers, who scored a silver and two bronze in individual men’s events.
