IT WAS a sensational day for Barbados on the track during the final morning of athletics at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games as two of the island’s finest took medals within a matter of minutes.
Sada Williams won gold in impressive fashion – setting a new Games record of 49.90 seconds in the 400m final at the Alexander Stadium.
Behind the Bajan, Team England won the medals. Silver and bronze went to Victoria Ohuruogu (50.72, PB) and Jodie Williams (51.26, SB) respectively. Compatriot Ama Pipi just missed out in fourth.
Only last month, the highly rated Williams won a bronze medal in the 400m at the World Championships in the United States, taking almost a second off the national record, she posted a new time of 49.75.
Just minutes earlier, Bajan Jonathan Jones (44.89) won 400m bronze.
The race was won by Muzala Samukonga who produced an extraordinary finish to win Zambia’s first gold of the Games and deny home favourite Matt Hudson-Smith a gold medal.
Hudson-Smith, world championship bronze medallist last month, led the race from start to finish and the 27-year-old from Wolverhampton looked set to delight the crowd at Alexander Stadium.
But 19-year-old Samukonga appeared from nowhere, blasting from fourth to snatch gold, with Hudson-Smith hanging on to take silver ahead of Jones.
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The Barbados and the Caribbean sports men and women honourably represented themselves and their nations during Birmingham’s Commonwealth Games that cost the city £800m to host.
Her Majesty’s Commonwealth Subjects are forced to concede there is a much better ways to spend £800m, and that would be on the economically neglected nations of Her Majesty’s Caribbean, African and Pacific Island Commonwealth Subjects.
Why is sport always given so much public money, whilst the poor; the marginalised, and those in real need are ignored by the world’s sporting and other Global Institutions?