Lithuanian Meilutyte grabs second gold of Youth Games
NANJING: London Olympic champion Ruta Meilutyte finished more than two seconds ahead of her nearest rival in the women’s 100 metres breaststroke final on Wednesday to claim her second gold medal of the Youth Olympic Games.
Meilutyte will now leave Nanjing and travel to Berlin for the European Championships, where she will compete in the 50m breaststroke.
The Lithuanian, who won in a time of 1:05.39, was not the only Olympic champion at the Nanjing Olympic Sports Centre on Wednesday.
South African Chad le Clos, who won gold in the 200m butterfly in London, watched the action in his role as Youth Olympic Games ambassador and had some words of advice for the young swimmers.
“I was told as a kid that I wasn’t a good butterfly swimmer, and that I was never going to make it as a pro,” he was quoted as saying by the Games official website. “I never listened to those people.”
Le Clos won a gold, three silver and a bronze medal at the inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Singapore in 2010.
“If it wasn’t for competing in the 2010 Singapore YOG, I wouldn’t have achieved my success at the Commonwealth Games in 2010, the World Championship in 2011 and at London 2012 - no doubt about it.”
Meanwhile, at the Xuanwu Lake Rowing-canoeing venue, Krystsina Staraselets of Belarus was delighted to take the gold medal in the women’s junior singles sculls.
There were no surprises in the table tennis competition, where Fan Zhendong and Liu Gaoyang took the men’s and women’s singles titles for China. The Australian women’s rugby sevens team finished the Games unbeaten after thumping Canada 38-10 in Wednesday’s final, while France avenged a group loss to Argentina to win the men’s final 45-22.
ADITYA JOSHI STORMS INTO SEMIFINALS
Indian shuttler Aditya Josh bounced back from a game down to beat Malaysia’s June Wei Cheam 20-22, 21-18, 21-18 and storm into the men’s singles sem ifinals in the Youth Olympics on Wednesday. He will meet Yuq Shi of China in the semifinals on Thursday.
Earlier on Tuesday, Joshi had stunned World No 8 Pham Cao Cuong of Vietnam 21-16, 21-19 to top Group D and make it to quarterfinals. Joshi had beaten Serbia’s Dragoslav Petrov in his first match.