Olympics: Team Belgium bring home 10 medals from Paris
Belgium's athletes are coming home from the Paris Olympics with 10 medals in cycling, athletics, judo and taekwondo. In Nafi Thiam and Remco Evenepoel, they had two of the event’s outstanding performers.
The team won their first medals on the first day of the tournament, in the cycling time trial. Evenepoel won the first of his two golds, with teammate Wout van Aert securing the bronze.
A week later, 24-year-old Evenepoel blew away the competition to take gold in the road race, making him the first man to win gold in both road cycling events at the same Olympics.
“The Games will never take place closer to home. That I can share this victory with all my fans, my family, all the friends along the roadside is very special,” Evenepoel said after his victory. “Two golds, I could only have dreamed of that.”
Historic third gold
In the heptathlon, Nafi Thiam made history as the first woman to win the event at three consecutive Olympics, following up her victories at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 with another gold. She is also the first Belgian athlete to successfully defend an Olympic title.
She held off a challenge from Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson to win the two-day event by 36 points, and will carry the flag for Belgium in the closing ceremony on Sunday evening.
"I had my doubts at times, but you have to be able to push them aside so you don’t limit yourself"
“It was very tough, both physically and mentally,” the 29-year-old said after the event. “The competition was very close. I had my doubts at times, but you have to be able to push them aside so you don’t limit yourself.”
Teammate Noor Vidts put in a series of strong performances and personal bests to join Thiam on the podium in third place.
Belgium’s only silver medal was won by Bashir Abdi in the marathon on the penultimate day of the Games. The 35-year-old from Ghent ran a season’s best to finish second behind Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia, going one better than the bronze he won in Tokyo three years ago.
He enjoyed noisy support from Belgian fans during a tough uphill section of the difficult course.
“It was deafening! Thanks to the atmosphere, I hardly felt the slope, even though it was almost a kilometre long,” he said. “It was incredible, as if the whole of Ghent, the whole of Belgium, had gathered along the course. It really gave me wings.”
Two more medals came from the team’s cyclists: Lotte Kopecky took bronze in the women’s road race, and on the track, Fabio Van den Bossche won bronze in the omnium competition.
Gabriella Willems finished third in the -67kg judo competition, ending an injury-hit season on a high note, and Sarah Chaâri, a 19-year-old medical student, also won bronze in the taekwondo.
With 33 athletes in the top 8 of their event, delegation leader Olav Spahl called it a “historic” performance, and was happy with the improvement on the seven medals won in Tokyo and with individual performances.
"It was as if the whole of Ghent, the whole of Belgium, had gathered along the course. It really gave me wings"
“I am not a man who uses many superlatives, but what Remco Evenepoel has done, no one has ever done before. Taking two gold medals in cycling is exceptional,” he said.
“Wout van Aert on the podium is also exceptional because he took a medal for the second time in a row. The same goes for Nafi Thiam, who won a third consecutive Olympic title. Two medals in the heptathlon is also incredible. And Bashir Abdi deserves tons of respect for his silver medal.”
After returning from France by train, the athletes will appear at the Grand Place in Brussels on Monday evening to greet fans.
Nafi Thiam receives her historic third gold medal in the heptathlon, alongside teammate Noor Vidts in third place © BELGA PHOTO JASPER JACOBS
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