TEAM Nigeria yesterday shot into the lead as the best African country at the on-going Paralympic Games in Rio with three of her athletes winning three more gold medals in the powerlifting and shot put events to bring her total to seven.
Advertisement
The Iranian team, comprising Ebrahim Ranjbar and Zahra Nemati, failed to overcome Lixue Zhao and Chunyan Wu of China in the finals and conceded a 3-5 defeat to win one more silver medal for the Iranian outfit.
British shot putter Aled Davies threw 15.97 meters to snatch the gold medal.
To secure the bronze medal, her coach Chen Ying-te (陳穎德) chose to increase the weight for Lin’s third attempt from 130 kg to 131 kg, and this forced Barcenas to push her third attempt from 131 kg to 132 kg.
Team Nigeria on Monday landed their fifth and sixth gold medals at the ongoing Paralympics games in Rio.
Nigeria’s performance so far at the Paralympics means that they are now the highest-ranked nation in Africa, positioned 9th in the overall medals table between Uzbekistan in 8th and Germany in 10th.
With the three gold, Malaysia are now in 23rd place in the medal tally among 170 countries taking part in the Games.
Xinhan, who has impairment to his left side due to cerebral palsy, had previously won four silver medals and a bronze in a career that has spanned four editions of the Paralympics.
Xue, 26, took the match 12-10, 11-7, 11-9 in 20 minutes at Riocentro.
Paralympic sport is so elitist and hard to win in.
Nwosu, who weighs 71.10kg, claimed the gold with a lift of 140 kg, while French lifter Souhad Ghazouani won silver, with a lift of 140.
Advertisement
The 18-year-old finished in 36.87 seconds, 26 hundredths of a second faster than Brazil’s Joana Maria Silva.
