All this to-ing and fro-ing is making us dizzy!
'WeirGate' took an unexpected twist today when Team Australia withdrew their successful appeal for a re-run of the men's 800m whelchair final. In a letter signed by the head coach and silver medallist Kurt Fearnley they called for the medals to be awarded as per the race yesterday.
So Londoner Dave Weir keeps his gold afterall.
The sportsmanship from Australia should be applauded, but not their decision to lodge the original appeal. More importantly, the incident should not have happened in the first place with a mix-up on the start-line. Every athlete should be content before the race begins.
A relieved Dave Weir said: “I am very happy and relieved and would like to thank everyone who has helped to overturn the decision to re-run the race. It has been a very difficult 12 hours but I now have the gold medal that I have worked so hard for and can focus on my remaining two events.”
He'll face the Australian in both these events, but at least now they can compete fairly with each other. We're stil going to be shouting "Go Dave!" at the television screen.
Photograph is the author's own
