Smyth targets London 2012
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Double paralympic gold medalist Jason Smyth arriving home to Eglinton on Saturday.
THE Village of Eglinton came to a standstill last Saturday afternoon as the residents welcomed home their double gold medal winning, Paralympic hero, Jason Smith.
Smith re-wrote the Paralympic record books during his exploits in Beijing, breaking his own world records on four separate occasions in heats and finals for the T13 100m and 200m respectively, and bringing home two gold medals for team Ireland.
Visually impaired Smyth returned from China last week, and the people of Eglinton were quick to arrange a victory parade, something which surprised Jason, as he told The Northern Constitution: " I had a very good day on Saturday, I was surprised at just how many people turned out, and very grateful to everyone that put in so much effort to support me.
“When you are on the other side of the world you just have no idea whether or not people are taking an interest, but judging by Saturday's turn out, plenty of people did. It was a great day, and it was wonderful to see the local community out in force."
Jason went on to say that despite what people may think, the joy and euphoria of winning a gold medal, is secondary to the relief a top class athlete feels when standing on the winners podium.
“ Of course I was delighted to win both races, but the big emotion standing up there is relief. So much time and effort was put into my success at the games, not only by myself but by much coaches and my family, so winning is a great relief as all that time and effort paid off. Anything can happen in any given race, there are no guarantees."
Amazingly, before claiming gold and a new world record in the T13 200m final Jason was hampered by what he described as a hamstring 'niggle', this factor is just one of the spurs that is pushing Smyth to focus his efforts on the 2012 Olympics in London, as he believes that he can certainly get faster. "Yeah I think I can go faster," he said, " there are lots of small imperfections that can happen in a race that shave of hundredths of a second of times, so yeah I don't see why not."
He added: "The target in the future is to compete mainstream at the 2012 Olympics, I have a few weeks off now before I start training for the European Under 23's, which is another mainstream event, but yeah the big goal is London 2012."
