Special Olympics Gibraltar struck gold on Tuesday at the Special Olympics World Summer games

Special Olympics Gibraltar struck gold on Tuesday at the Special Olympics World Summer games in Berlin with their first medals of the games. First was Marvin Zammit who came in second in his 800m final but was promoted to the gold medal position when the first runner home was disqualified. 

Meanwhile in a very similar situation Gino Francis came second in his 200m final after refusing to let the third place runner pass him and fought to the end to keep hold of second position. However again the leader was disqualified after the race leading to Gino claiming the gold medal. 

Gibraltar’s first Special Olympics cyclist, Francis Mauro, did really well in his 5km divisioning event in the morning, coming in first after a sprint in the last 200 metres and then went on in the afternoon to claim silver medal in the final of the 15km road race.

In the bocce event Dorian Zammit won two matches 6:4 and 5:2 and narrowly lost one 4:5 in the morning before going on to claim the silver medal in his bocce singles event. His fellow bocce athlete, Miguel Rubio, came 5th in his division.

Elsewhere on the track Mark dos Santos did so so well in his 50m race that he broke his personal best but unfortunately exceeded the Special Olympic fair racing rules and was disqualified, receiving a participation ribbon. 

The icing on the cake for Team Gibraltar was a 5-3 victory over SO Germany ‘A’ team in the futsal competition. The game was played at a good tempo for the Gibraltar men and they got the job done, leading 3-0 at half time. The German team pulled two goals back in the second half but SOG showed courage and determination to win 5-3 in the end with 2 goals from Jansen Gilbert, 2 goals from Jeremy Prescott and 1 from Giovanni Yeo 

In the golf Level 4, Julian de las Heras and Ivan Mannion Gomez completed their second 9-hole rounds with scores of 60 and 65 respectively. In the skills events Nicholas Payas improved on his score of 51 on the first day with a score of 54 while Charles Zammit scored 48, down on his first day score of 56 but leaving the pair very close on combined scores.

All in all a very productive and satisfying day for Team Gibraltar. Wednesday will start with the bowling doubles final featuring Shane Martinez and Patrick Slater at 9 am.