Athletics at YOG (Day 3)

Today marks the 3rd day of the Youth Olympics for Track and Field. The weather is perfectly fine today which was a total contrast of yesterday and the day before. Not too hot and not too wet. The events today are not as exciting as the day before. It will be a long wait before the sprint event, 200m. But nonetheless, the excitement at the stadium was good enough to make this wait worth while.


The qualifications of 400m Hurdles for both girls and boys took place today. Head Coach of Reactiv, Alfred Sim, was at scene today giving his view of races. A coach friend of his from Denmark was here for the YOG. His athlete Stina Troest was participating the 400m H. She is hot favourite as she's ranked 5th this year for World Youth Ranking. Stina was in the last heat of the girls 400m H and the race was dramatic. French girl, Aurelie Chaboudez, finished just a few milliseconds ahead of her but both of them did PBs and are in the gold medal contention.


Just like the saying, the ball is round, in Track and Field, anything can happen in a race. The last heat of the boys 400m H saw the USA boy, Gregory Coleman, stumble at the 4th hurdle. His left leg hit the hurdle causing him to trip. However, that did not stop him from finishing the race and its great sportsmanship seen here at the Bishan Stadium. It was breathtaking to also watch the boy from India, Kumar Durgesh, outrun German Boy Felix Franz in their heats.



Singaporean Ranjitha Raja braved the 16 others today at the 1000m girls event. Her timing of 3mins 07.66secs was 5 seconds shy of her personal best timing but she managed to come in 11th in her heat.
The 200m boys was electrifying. Zhenye Xie from China was fastest overall with a timing of 21.27secs. Tomasz Kluczynski from Poland did a timing of 21.80 and was looking quite good in the race. Another to look out for at the finals will be Patrick Domogala from Germany. These boys are clearly a class above any of our local athletes as their timings today were so close to our national record of 21.14secs. Will we see one of them surpassing it in the finals? We shall wait and see. Good job to them.


Written by: Shalindran
Photos by: Calvin Kang