![]() ![]() Skateboarding: Japan’s Momiji Nishiya, 13, wins Olympic women’s street gold Kiesenhofer, without a professional team since 2017, is her nation's first gold medallist at a summer Olympics since Athens 2004. She then attacked again in the closing stages, thinking she was breaking away for the win.īut Kiesenhofer, clearly struggling as she willed her body not to cramp, continued to power her way around the circuit up ahead, glancing over her shoulder but finding no opposition in sight.Īfter crossing the line, she fell to the ground in tears, stunned in the aftermath of the biggest win of her career as Van Vleuten and Elisa Longo Borghini took silver and bronze behind her. Van Vleuten who had crashed earlier in the race, was reeled back in with around 25km to go, before she and her Dutch team-mates launched another chase with around 10km left, absorbing Plichta and Shapira back into the peloton. Van Vleuten broke away from the peloton on a charge of her own, looking to make amends for the horror crash that ended her road race at Rio 2016 when she had looked set for the title. That group was cut to three - Kiesenhofer, Anna Plichta of Poland and Israel's Omer Shapira - with around 70km remaining, before the Austrian time trial champion went solo on the first approach to the Speedway circuit, where the race would conclude. ![]() Kiesenhofer was one of a five-rider group that escaped the rest of the field within moments of the 137km race getting under way. ![]() My legs were completely empty," she said. It's unlikely she will have realised the magnitude of her success yet, however, her exhaustion apparent as she collapsed to the tarmac of the Fuji International Speedway circuit, gasping for oxygen as her depleted body realised it could finally stop. The 30-year-old launched a remarkable solo breakaway, sustaining it - her lungs and legs screaming - to finish more than a minute ahead of 2019 world champion Annemiek van Vleuten.Ī Cambridge graduate, Kiesenhofer has written her name in her nation's history books, the first Austrian to win an Olympic road race medal and the first to win an Olympic medal in any cycling discipline in 125 years. In Photo: Vietnamese Delegation Marches At Tokyo Olympics Opening CeremonyĪnna Kiesenhofer wins shock road race gold with GB's Lizzie Deignan 11th Tokyo Olympics Updates: Day 1 Results, Day 2 Key Events & Vietnam Team News She can also anticipate a happy homecoming in Brazil as her proud family awaits her: “I was able to realize my dream and my father’s dream," she said.Tokyo Olympics 2020 Update: Adam Peaty Wins GB’s First Tokyo 2020 Gold Making the Olympics History But the day belongs to Nishiya, whose name goes down in the record books as the first female skateboarder to strike gold at an Olympics. Rayssa Leal, who is not only Brazil's youngest-ever medallist but also an Olympian, won silver with a score of 14.64 with Nakayama the bronze medallist with 14.49. Now with 13-year-old gold and silver medallists, that youth has proven its ability to shine in ways few could have predicted on the greatest sporting stage of all. One of the reasons people were so thrilled about skateboarding being included in the Olympic program was the youthful excitement it would bring to the Games. I was nervous in the first run, but I wasn’t after that.” -Nishiya. “I’m so happy to win the Olympics in Japan, and I’m so happy to win my first Olympics as one of the youngest competitors,” she said, before explaining how her initial jitters drifted away as the competition began: “It’s like other competitions. Nishiya, who won a silver medal at the 2021 world championships in Rome, has now secured the ultimate prize in the sport after her unique blend of trickery, skill and consistency saw her triumph in a tense final that went all the way down to the final run. Her final three runs (4.15, 4.66, and 3.43) were enough to secure the top spot on the podium, as she beat Brazil's Rayssa Leal, also 13, and 16-year-old NAKAYAMA Funa to gold in what is believed to be the youngest Olympic podium ever. The gold medallist, NISHIYA Momiji, wrote her name into the history books with a score of 15.26. In the inaugural Olympics street skateboarding competition, two of the youngest competitors at the Olympic Games won the gold and silver.
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