Rio de Janeiro, Aug 9 (IANS) Brazilian judo fighter Rafaela Silva earned the first gold medal for the host country at the 2016 Rio Olympics, defeating Mongolia’s Sumiya Dorjsuren in the 57 kg final.
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Brazil has won its first gold medal in the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Gold for Silva marks a fairy-tale ascent to the Olympic podium from a childhood in Rio’s Cidade de Deus favela, made famous in the film City Of God.
But Silva’s path to Olympic stardom was halted in London, after she was favored to win a medal, but lost at the 2012 Games. She is also an unlikely story, on an Olympic team that is disproportionately full of white Brazilians (in a country that is 53-per-cent black or mixed-race) and competitors from the middle and upper classes, whose families can afford to invest in sport. It has clearly burned in her, for four years.
After the sensational win, Silva told journalists that this was an appropriate answer to all the people who humiliated her. “People mocked me but I showed everyone that my place belongs in the Judo ring”, said the 24 year old who was born in the known favelas of Brazil and raised in poverty.
“She did not practice judo for three months after that and nearly gave it all up”, her father recalled. “I hope to be an example for them and I think I can be”.
“It was very hard to overcome the problems from 2012 but I insisted that judo is my life and [I received] support from my coach and my family and the Brazilian people”, she said afterwards. “The opponent was a girl from Hungary who I had beaten easily before”, she said.
A day after adding a record 19th gold medal to his collection, Michael Phelps swam in preliminaries of the men’s 200 meter butterfly, where he holds the Olympic record, and fellow American Katie Ledecky is focusing on the women’s 200 meter freestyle.
The world series champions went behind early in the match but unanswered tries from Emma Tonegato, Evania Pelite, Ellia Green and Charlotte Caslick gave them a lead New Zealand were unable to overhaul.
Team GB judoka Alice Schlesinger, meanwhile, failed to reach the quarter-finals in the women’s under-63kg after she was narrowly defeated by the Netherlands’ Anicka Van Emden. The tattoo reads, in Portuguese: “God knows how much I’ve suffered and what I’ve done to get here”. She crushed her own world record in the 400 freestyle Sunday night, touching almost 5 seconds ahead of her closest pursuer.
Russian Federation took gold and silver in the women’s sabre fencing as Yana Egorian beat Sofiya Velikaya, who again suffered heartbreak after also losing the 2012 Olympic final. “I’m just happy to be here”, Efimova said. “I’ve been training a lot these last few years and the results are showing”.
“She was a fighter, a real warrior just like you saw”, he said, as he coated the fried dough treats with cinnamon and sugar.
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Kohei Uchimura of Japan competes on the floor during the Rio Olympics men’s team final.
