2024-08-04 16:26:35
As she uttered these words, the Olympic bronze medal was already hanging completely fresh on the neck of Viktorija Senkutė, not far from smiling, she was tearing the cheeks of the Olympian community. Who cried, who laughed.
A medal awarding ceremony took place on the Verė prie Marna canal, V. Senkutė stood next to very experienced competitors. Gold went to 26-year-old Karolien Florijn, the Dutch vice-champion of the Tokyo Games (7 min. 17.28 sec.), while Tokyo Olympic champion Emma Twigg won silver (7 min. 19.14).
Rowers Kamilė Kralikaitė and Ieva Adomavičiūtė rushed to congratulate their friend as soon as possible, hug and kiss them after such a fantastic performance, and kayaker Simonas Maldonis, whose starts in Paris are still waiting, couldn’t wait for their best friend.
At that time, D. Gudzinevičiūtė’s heart had already revived the feeling from Sydney in 2000, where the shooter won the Olympic gold.
“Every time I see a medal being hung, I experience the same emotions and see what it means to the athletes,” he added shortly. “When I see such a competition, I experience it in a way that I have not experienced as an athlete.”
Here, D. Gudzinevičiūtė revealed a small secret, which was later confirmed by V. Senkutė herself, when she said “I still don’t understand what’s going on.”
“One moment – the athletes immediately cannot even understand what they have done. It will be felt tomorrow morning. Now this is just the beginning. At the moment, everything is happening in a hurry – quickly on the podium, quickly at conferences, quickly – doping control. And in the evening – there will be emotions, understanding will begin to come. It is incomparable. That feeling of a job well done that comes…” explained the LTOK president.
She soon emphasized that the happiness due to V. Senkutė’s bronze medal is particularly great, but it is necessary to celebrate the achievements of other rowers as well.
Lithuanian rowers performed really well at the Paris Games, although they did not avoid the very painful and unexpected elimination of Donata Karalienė and Dovilė Rimkutė, although the latter were awarded medals.
However, debutantes shone in Paris. Single rower Giedrius Bieliauskas made it to the B final and took 10th place. Brothers Dovydas Stankūnas and Domantas Stankūnas took 8th place in the Olympic Games.
Single double rowers Kamilė Kralikaitė and Ieva Adomavičiūtė fueled their hopes for medals and maintained a high note until the end. Debutantes who started rowing together a year ago took 5th place in the Olympics.
“Strong emotions – all the time. The rowers really made it very exciting. And we are pleasantly surprised by all our debutantes. Not only the rowing, but the rowers performed exceptionally well. You know, some athletes who took 5th place may seem like they didn’t want it, but their results are really brutally good. I am very happy for them. Third place is great. We are happy for her and for everyone,” D. Gudzinevičiūtė said openly.
In addition to K.Kralikaitė and I.Adomavičiūtė, swimmer Danas Rapšys also took fifth place at the Paris Olympics, who openly grumbled after the 200m freestyle swimming and did not hide his great disappointment.
Kotryna Teterevkova also took fifth place in the 200 m swimming competition, who did not speak to reporters after the finish at first, and explained the next day that she wanted to think carefully about the situation, which disappointed her greatly.
2024-08-04 16:26:35