Thais bag record medal haul at Rio Paralympics
THAILAND’S athletic contingent has written another chapter in its Paralympic history by setting a new record medal haul at the Rio Games.
As of yesterday, Thailand had claimed six gold, five silver and six bronze medals.
The Kingdom captured one gold, one silver and one bronze in the boccia competition in Brazil on Friday (yesterday Thailand time), while the men’s table tennis team won bronze.
With only one day remaining before the curtain comes down on the Games, the Thai contingent has captured 17 medals.
The Kingdom surpassed its gold-medal target of four medals, which was achieved in London four years ago, and beat the previous highest medal tally of 11 that was achieved at the 2000 Sydney Olympics when the country collected five gold, four silver and two bronze.
Thailand remained in 20th place on the medal tally yesterday.
In the boccia event, Watcharaphon Vongsa earlier handed Thailand its first gold medal in the mixed team (BC 1-2) after teaming up with Worawut Saengampa, Pattaya Tadtong and Subin Tipmanee to beat Japan 9-4 in the gold-medal match.
On Friday, Watcharaphon, 26, stunned Worawut – who had been victorious on each of his previous three outings including the World Individual Championship in Beijing this year – 5-4 (1-0 0-2 1-2 3-0) in an all-Thai final in the mixed individual (BC 2 class) event.
Watcharaphon got off to a flying start to lead 1-0, but Worawut won the next two ends 2-0 2-1 to lead 4-2. The fourth and last end saw Watcharaphon fare much better to blank Worawut 3-0 for an aggregate of 5-4 to capture the gold medal, the sixth for Thailand in Rio de Janeiro. Worawut picked up silver.
Thailand claimed two more bronze medals on Friday including one in table tennis event. Pornchok Larpyen took home the boccia mixed individual (BC4 class) bronze after overwhelming Korean Seo Hyeonseok 8-1 (2-0 2-0 3-0 1-1) in the third-place playoff. The gold and silver medals went to Hong Kong’s Wing Leung Yuk and Slovakian Samuel Andrejcik respectively.
In the tennis competition, Thailand’s Yuttajak Glinbancheun partnered Anurak Laowong to beat Brazilians Knat Welder and David Andrade de Freitas 2-0 in the bronze-medal match of the men’s team event. China captured gold after powering past Germany 2-1 in the final showdown.
