He announced that he will award the people of Rio and Brazil its last “medal” tomorrow – the Paralympic Order, which is the highest honour bestowed by the Paralympic movement.
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Tributes were also paid to Iranian cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, who died following a crash in the men’s C4/C5 road race on Saturday.
Egypt’s medal-winning champions from the Rio de Janeiro Paralympics have chose to boycott the country’s satellite TV channels due to their failure to broadcast their competitions and a general lack of interest in their achievements.
Brazilian justice has blocked assets of the company that serves as the host broadcaster organization for the Olympic Games.
Watching the marathon along the seafront in Copacabana earlier, spectator Marcelo Augusto Miranda Costa said the Games had been “a moment of magic for the city”.
“We’ll ignore them, just as they ignored us”, said Mahmoud.
The positive ending to the Games was a turnaround from a few weeks ago, when the organisers’ financial woes in the wake of the August Olympics and a lack of interest in tickets raised fears of failure.
Then Ricardinho, the star of Brazil’s gold medal winning five-a-side Paralympic football team, brought out the national flag.
Part of that success was due to many tickets being sold for as little as US$3 (S$4.08) – or given away to school children in an worldwide fill-the-seats campaign. President Michel Temer, who had just taken power after his rival Dilma Rousseff was thrown out of office in an impeachment vote, was loudly booed by the crowd at both at the Olympic and Paralympic opening ceremonies. The closing ceremony took place in the Macarana stadium, Sputnik reported.
OBS is a company created by the International Olympic Committee in 2001.
Craven warned earlier Sunday that “major change” will be needed from Russian Federation to be allowed back into Paralympic competition.
And Cundy, now a seven-time Paralympic champion, believes ParalympicsGB can build on the phenomenal success of Rio 2016.
The Ukraine just edged ahead of the US for third place with 117 medals and 41 golds against the U.S.’s 115 medals and forty golds.
The second best event for China was track and field.
The 37-year-old from Wisbech won his first gold medal as a swimmer in Atlanta in 1996 and has competed in three Games in the pool and three on the bike, so he is ideally placed to appraise Britain.
Cyclists Laura Trott and Jason Kenny were among the heroes at the Olympics, along with Mo Farah, victor of the the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres double for the second Games in a row, and the women’s hockey team, who stunned reigning champions The Netherlands with a shootout victory in the final.
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With the three golds and a bronze, Malaysia was ranked 36th in the final medal tally among 163 countries taking part in the Games.
