The performance of Special Olympics GB’s athletes just gets better and better at these European Games in Belgium. 

Special Olympics GB’s historic European Games adventure in Belgium goes from strength to strength.  With news of results coming in all the time, GB has won 38 medals so far – 16 Golds, 9 Silvers and 13 Bronze –and there are still two days of competition remaining.

Position 15/09/14 16/09/14 17/09/14 OVERALL
Gold 2 3 11 16
Silver 3 2 4 9
Bronze 0 4 9 13
4th 2 0 3 5
5th 1 1 4 6
6th 0 0 1 1
7th 2 1 1 4
8th 1 0 0 1

 

It was another incredible day for GB’s swimmers with 3 Gold, 1 Bronze and a 4th place produced by the Aquatics team.  Maria Orsi swam a three second personal best – improving her divisioning time to 27.96 with excellent race skills and claiming the gold medal.  Adam Meanwell swam two seconds faster than his divisional time winning the race comfortably and claiming his second gold medal of the competition.   Natalie Moon also cruised home to take the gold medal to add to the silver she won on Monday.

Charles Culwick swam his race with his goggles full of water and off his eyes fighting for a medal place he finished in 3rd place and winning the Bronze medal. Scott Cleaver finished his race in 4th place.   The Aquatics team are looking forward to Thursday’s action when Sam Pattinson swims the 50m Butterfly Final.

All four members of the GB badminton team record medals on Wednesday afternoon.  In singles competition,Samantha Monk and Catherine Carson (both from Wigan) won excellent silver and bronze medals respectively.  Meanwhile, Mark Goulder from Southport and Kerry Duncan from Arbroath were in sparkling form to pick up Gold.

In Judo, three of the five members of the team in action today all secured medals.  Daniel Amel-Azizpour from Bradley Stoke in Bristol picked up a bronze in a great effort, while John Kane (Aberdeenshire) showed incredible character to win silver.  The star showing today, however, was Holly Tadman from East Sussex who was unbeaten and won Gold for GB.

Thomas Farley (Nr. Rye/Hastings, South East) and Zoe Kane (Aberdeenshire/Grampian) will be performing in judo competition on Thursday.

Chloe Russell had a fantastic day with two outstanding performances on Vault and Bars.  Her vault was great and scored 19.45 (matching her qualification score) and gaining her a bronze medal.

There were more medals for cycling on Wednesday – the brilliant Leanne Peters took a second convincinggold place of the Games in a very well disciplined 10 Km TT race.

Ruairidh Brown has followed up his first day Gold with a double bronze in 10km TT & 25km TT.  Dan Weston was 7th in the same race.

Gary Winslow was brilliant and secured bronze in the 10km TT – missing out on Silver by fractions. Although, just missing out on a bronze, David Jackson’s 4th place was an absolute triumph for the cycling and GB team – again a fantastic ride by David and getting faster again.  Well done David!

In Athletics on Wednesday, the team took two gold, one silver, one bronze and two 5th places. Alicia Bradshaw had a huge achievement and won silver in the 100m, while Niall Finlayson had a brilliant bronze medal in 200m. Fleur O’Donohue won a gold medal in the 100m and also ran a superb time, beating her qualifying time Edward Williams leaped to victory by winning a gold medal in the long jump.  He beat his qualifying jump of 2.68 by 2 centimetres.  A thoroughly deserved medal.

Our terrific table tennis twins Alistair Feltham & Duncan Feltham from Bournemouth – who have already secured a bronze in the men’s doubles – create a piece of history on Wednesday afternoon when they became the first set of twins to play each other in a Special Olympics major competition.