Rio de Janeiro – Lucas Sithole was 5-2 up with two match points to secure South Africa’s ninth medal of the Paralympics Wednesday afternoon. He had stranded David Wagner, his opponent in the match for wheelchair tennis bronze, and had a simple forehand to win the match. He clipped it into the net. What followed was a staggering comeback by Wagner and a strange collapse by the South African.
He lost 6-1, 2-6, 5-7 to the experienced American, who won his seventh Paralympic medal in three Games. Sithole was distraught, but he might reflect on how he lost his head in that final set and stopped, as Holger Losch, the South African team manager said, “playing his own game” in a match that lasted an hour and 50 minutes. Wagner roared back from 1-5 down in the third set to lead 6-5, and the crowd, who had been supporting Sithole, lost their voice and began murmur.
“Lucas is gutted,” said Losch. Sithole had no words, no explanation. Sometimes sport deals you a hand you can’t understand. Sometimes you just need to be by yourself.
Sithole would do well to seek out Zanele Situ and Ernst van Dyk the Paralympic Village tonight, the two most experienced members of the team. They will tell him that there will be days like these. Situ has one more event at the Paralympic Games, the discus on Saturday, but she has a medal that surprised even her. She had thought she was fourth for much of the night, but then discovered she had won her fourth Paralympic medal in the javelin.
At the age of 45, Situ won her third medal in the javelin and broke a Paralympic record of 17.90m on Tuesday night. That did not last as it was overtaken by Nigeria’s Flora Ugwunwa, who won gold and broke the world record with 20.25m. Hania Aidi of Tunisia took silver with 18.88m.
“For me to get a medal, I didn’t think would happen. When the Nigerian girl threw over 20-metres, I thought, ‘I’m out.’ After the last throw, I was more than happy. It was the best thing,” said Situ.
“I tried my best to make a good start because if I had to go harder in the last round I would make more mistakes because I would be under more pressure. I wanted to make a statement in the first round and take the pressure of. I didn’t do a no throw in the first round, so I was happy with that.”
Van Dyk desperately wanted a medal in the cycling time trial yesterday morning. It is the one event he does not have a Paralympic gong in, but yesterday history repeated itself.
“I’ve been fourth in Beijing, fifth in London and fifth again today here. It’s seems I’m stuck in fifth for the time trial,” said Van Dyk at the Pontal circuit on the western coast of Rio. The wind had picked up, making the 20km course tougher.
“Going out I couldn’t really hear the splits on the radio because of the win, and I didn’t know what was going on. On the last split I heard that I was fourth or fifth, and I kinda knew it was going to be tough coming back into the wind. Everybody’s pushing themselves to the limit. That’s what the time trial is about, pushing yourself.”
The race was won by former formula one driver Alessandro Zanardi, who has the backing of BMW and with that comes a bike that no other has. Stuart Tripp of Australia took the silver and Oscar Sanchez of the US bronze.
“I’m looking forward to (today’s) road race. That’s more my kind of race, although all these corners are going to make it hard and quite technical. It’s going to be very hard to work for medal. We are doing 60km in this heat. I won silver in London, so we will look forward to that.”
Visually-impaired Jonathan Ntutu won his 100m heat and qualified second fastest, while the 14-year old superstar, Ntando Mahlangu was third in his 100m heat, breaking the African record with a 12.70secs.
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