Hilton Langenhoven took his second gold medal in as many days on Saturday when he won the long jump F12 in a record 7,31m at the Paralympics in Beijing.
Langenhoven won the pentathlon on Friday evening with a world record score of 3 401 points.
He took the lead in the third round of jumping with a 7,10m effort, and his fourth-round leap was too good for silver medallist Osamah Alshanqiti of Saudi Arabia and bronze medallist and former Paralympic record holder Oleg Panyutin of Azerbaijan, who shared a distance of 7,06m.
”The guy from Azerbaijan is talented,” said Langenhoven. ”Osamah is a new one, but I know he performs really well. Before the competition, I knew those two would be my major opponents.”
And South Africa’s medal tally was given a further boost when Riaan Nel took silver in cycling’s mixed road race CP1/CP2 over 24,2km in 48:05,33. He was 3:27,52 behind the clear winner, David Stone of Great Britain.
”I just stayed behind the two guys in front of me,” said Nel. ”For the last part of the race, I had a feeling that I could do it. I felt strong and I did it. It’s unbelievable,” he said.
In other results, Oscar Pistorius swept into the evening final of his 200m T44 in an imperious 22,71 seconds, clocking well clear of second-fastest qualifier Jim Bob Bizzell of the United States, who ran 23,22.
Pistorius’s teammate, Arnu Fourie, also qualified for the final in 24,17.
It was a good sprinting day for the South Africans, as Jonathan Ntutu qualified for the T13 100m final, Teboho Mokgalagadi for the men’s 100m T35 final, and Ilse Hayes for the women’s T13 200m final. Marius Stander also advanced to a final — the 200m T38 final, which will be contested on Sunday.
In swimming, Shireen Sapiro was the second-fastest qualifier for the evening final in the 100m backstroke S10, but she will be up against new world record-holder Sophie Pascoe of New Zealand. Sapiro’s 1:13,04 was 1,78 seconds off that pace.
In an earlier race, Emily Gray missed out on the final of the women’s 100m backstroke S9, while Sarah Shannon made it through to the final of the 50m freestyle S3. — Sapa