The medals continued to flow yesterday for the Special Olympics team of T&T as the local athletes bagged two gold, two silver, and three bronze at the Special Olympics World Games in Abu Dhabi.
The gold medals were shared among athletics and equestrian, with Israel Duncan winning the 50m run. At the Police Club Stadium, where Duncan clocked a time of 14.65 seconds to finish ahead of Kirk Wint of Jamaica who finished in 15.06 seconds. Adrian Sharbani of North Macedonia was third in 15.12 seconds.
Fellow runners Justin Providence and Jonathan Walker also earned bronze. In the 200m M20 final, Providence ran a time of 26.21 seconds to finish behind Obrian Mcfarlane of Jamaica (24.08 seconds) and Freddy Andrade of Ecuador (25.56 seconds), who got silver. In the M21 final of the 200m, Walker won bronze with a time of 26.38 seconds.
At the Hamdan Sports Complex, the country's swimmers had a slow day but Nikoli Lalla brought home silver for T&T in the 50m breaststroke event in a time of 38.96 seconds.
T&T secured its second gold medal of the day at the AL Forsan International Sports Resort, where equestrian is taking place. Riding W’rsan, Aaron Ben Ali scored 58 points to claim gold in his BI Level “Working Trails” competition ahead of Australian Willow
Hersant with 51 points and Wafaa Al Kindy of the United Arab Emirates with 50 points.
Fellow T&T rider, Omari Petterson, riding “Miss Poly” was able to win the bronze medal with a score of 45 points to tie with Marie Stuart of Great Britain while Darlene Milord of Haiti won the gold with 52 points. Jacek Czarnecki of Poland got the silver with 47 points. T&T's Romaldo Stafford on “Dimpson” earned 49 points to achieve fourth place.
The medal count also grew when Gary Boodoo won his second medal, a silver while competing in M20 Bocce Singles. Boodoo won 12:0 against Lebanon but was unable to overcome Juan Rodriquez of Andorra in the gold medal game which ended 1:10.
In the M06, Bernard Singh ended in fourth place in the Bocce Singles although earning his second draw (8:8) against eventual silver medallist Taha Alghawi of Libya.
In the F24 category, Alicia Khan began singles competition by winning her game 12:01 against Amphayvone Boundavong of Laos and is grouped with compatriot Shanice Baptiste, whom to overcome severe flulike symptoms which she has been battling for the last couple of days. She showed a lot of character to compete but lost 0:6 to Jing Wu of China.