Schwarzer walks to 50 km Gold

Dinesh Weerawansa reporting from China

Italian Alex Schwarzer established a new Olympic record to win the men’s 50km walk gold medal of the Beijing Games here today.

The ace long distance walker’s timing of three hours, 37 minutes and nine seconds erased the 20-year-old existing Olympic record of three hours, 38 minutes and 29 seconds held by Vyacheslav Ivanenko of the former Soviet Union way back in Seoul, 1998.

Finishing second with a personal best three hours, 39 minutes and 27 seconds to take the silver medal was Australian Jared Tallent, who has not won any major 50km walk international title and was disqualified from men’s 20km walk in Athens Olympics. Russian Denis Nizhegorodov, with a timing of three hours, 40 minutes and 14 seconds won the bronze medal.

Anne-Caroline Chausson of France accounted for the first ever Olympic gold medal in women’s BMX cycling, returning a time of 35.976 seconds. She pushed compatriot Laetitia le Corguille (38.042) to the second place while American Jill Kintner settled for the bronze in 38.674.

Maris Strombergs of Latvia made a memorable debut when he took gold with a time of 36.190 in the men’s BMX cycling, beating the American challenge of Mike Day (36.606) and Donny Robinson (36.972), who finished second and third respectively.

It was Latvia’s first gold medal in the Beijing Games.

In the Olympic women’s basketball tournament, Australia crushed the hosts China 90-56 in the semi finals. The win made way for a final showdown against defending Olympic champion the United States.

In men’s beach volleyball competition of the 204-nation Games, Athens 2004 gold medallists Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego of Brazil thumped Georgian pair Jorge Terceiro and Renato Gomes in straight sets to take the bronze medal. In a sport characterized by tight scores, the 21-15, 21-10 score line was a fair indication of the massive gulf between the two sides. Santos and Rego, were upset by their compatriots Marcio Araujo and Fabio Magalhaes in the semifinal, but they showed their class by totally outplaying Terceiro and Gomes.

Meanwhile, a total of 675 million Chinese television viewers, 55 percent of China’s total television audience, tuned into national television CCTV’s major Olympic broadcasting channels in a single day.

The 675 million viewers figure came from a survey conducted from 2:00 a.m. on August 20 to 2:00 a.m. on August 21. Research was conducted by the CCTV and CSM audience measurement system and only includes statistics for mainland audiences.

The CCTV Olympic channels have attracted a total of 1.102 billion viewers in China in the 13 days since the opening of the Beijing Olympics on August 8, representing 90 percent of the nations television viewers, or 84 percent of the country’s entire population of 1.3 billion.

There is a great demand for Olympic souvenirs as millions of people showed keen interest to take back something memorable with them.

Tourists select the Olympic-related souvenirs at an exclusive shop selling the licensed products of the Beijing Games in the Olympic Green in Beijing.

The Olympic-related souvenirs in the shop are selling fast as the 16-day world sports extravaganze is drawing to an end.

BEIJING, Friday.