Quincy Hall wins 400m final, Kristen Faulkner takes second gold
Quincy Hall made an epic comeback to win gold in the 400m, the US synchronized swimmer took the silver medal with the moonwalk and Kristen Faulkner won another gold in cycling.
LE BOURGET, France – Sport climbing created an Olympic dilemma at the Paris Games on Thursday.
American 18-year-old Sam Watson set a new men’s speed climbing world record by climbing the 49-foot route in 4.74 seconds.
Shortly thereafter, he received an Olympic bronze medal in addition to his current title of “Fastest Climber in the World”.
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For anyone unfamiliar with speed climbing, it was a learning moment. Speed climbing is the first time that the sport has been introduced as a separate, medal-winning discipline. In this sport, Watson and the other climbers use 20 handholds and 11 footholds to pull and propel themselves up the 49-foot wall.
Times determine rankings and world records in sport climbing. However, medalists and winners in elite competitions are determined in head-to-head races. And these have flown by, as the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals are completed in about 20 minutes.
In his semi-final heat on Thursday, Watson slipped and cost him the win. He finished the race in 4.93 seconds and lost the heat to China’s Peng Wu, who advanced to the final with a time of 4.85 seconds.
Watson, who was relegated to the bronze medal heats, beat his world record of 4.75 by 1/100 of a second. He set the previous world record of 4.75 in the elimination heats.
Moments later, in the final, Indonesian Veddriq defeated Leonardo Cheng, setting a personal best of 4.75 seconds – good enough for Olympic gold, but 1/100 slower than the world record Watson had just set.
Watson had no complaints about the format used to determine medalists. If anything, his “little slip-up” in the semifinals seemed to underscore the nature of a sport.
“A few millimetres of error are the key to success in this sport,” Watson said. “I don’t regret anything. I don’t think the pressure was too much for me or anything like that.”
The stumble probably cost him 0.2 seconds, enough to make the difference in the head-to-head race against the Chinese Wu.
Next up is Watson: He said he hopes to improve the world record to 4.6 seconds, and he didn’t sound worried that while he is the current world record holder, he has an Olympic bronze medal, not a gold one.
“I think all of those things are more external than internal,” he said. “I had an idea of who I was, and that doesn’t really change in terms of my performance.”
Olympic medals 2024:
