Athletics At YOG (Day 1)

Today marks the first day of the Youth Olympics Games for the Track and Field athletes. The weather was not our usual Tuesday morning sun but rather a scorching sun with little wind. That did not deter the Youths in their quest for medals. Today's events were mostly qualification rounds into the next level.


In the 100m hurdles for girls, we had our very own Singaporean girl, Goh Wei Ning. Being in the 1st heat, she was the quickest off the blocks as compared to those in her round. Her final timing of 15.01secs was only fast enough to be able to run in the lower classifications. Ekaterina Bleskina from Russia was the fastest qualifier posing a time of 13.32sec. However Megan Simmonds from Jamaica (picture below) caught my attention. She was the shortest among all her other competitors but had excellent technique clearing the hurdles. She would be one of the few to look out for at the Finals.



Sean Toh was the next athlete donning the Singapore flag and running 110 Hurdles. A hiccup in the starts caused the athletes in his heat to stop running once the gun was off. Though the siren was already sounded, Sean continued to run for another 40m until he was signaled to stop by one of the officials standing by the side. His final time after the 2nd run was 15.09secs which was more than 1sec of his PB. If not for the disruption, I felt he might have been able to run a better race.

Wendy Enn from the Singapore Sports School ran the 400m. The field for this event was very strong with athletes doing timings like 53s. Wendy clocked a timing of 62.74s. I would predict that the 400m girls final will be a fight between Robin Reynolds from the USA and Bukola Abogunloko from Nigeria.

The last sprint event for that day was the 400m boys. Once again, the youths showed their class by running fantastic timings which have surpassed our national record. One athlete was the talk of the town at this event. Santos Luguelin from the Dominican Republic (seen from the picture below) lead from the start to finish and his superlative time of 46.82secs was well enough to put him at the top.

It is just Day 1 and already we see so many outstanding results. As the days go by, we will be expecting first class performances by the youths. I cannot wait for Day 2 to come as it will be where the speed demons will be unleashed!! The 100m heats.

So till then, here's Shalindran signing off from Reactiv


Credits: Photos courtesy of Weijen Chao and Calvin Kang