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Hüfner and Neuner snatch double gold

Gold medals snared overnight by luger Tatjana Hüfner and biathlete Magdalena Neuner have shot Germany to the top of the medal tally at the Winter Olympics in Canada.

Hüfner and Neuner snatch double gold
Luger Tatjana Hüfner celebrates her win. Photo: DPA

Hüfner’s win continued Germany’s domination of the luge, as the team threaten a clean sweep of all three Olympic titles. Germany’s Natalie Geisenberger won bronze in the luge.

Neuner, meanwhile, added gold in the 10km pursuit to add to her silver medal in the 7.5km individual event. She will have another chance at gold on Thursday in the 15km individual event.

The wins take Germany to nine medals – three gold, four silver and two bronze – ahead of the United states with eight medals (with two golds) and France on seven (also with two golds.)

Also overnight, speed skater Jenny Wolf took the silver medal in the 500 metre race after South Korean skater Lee Sang-Hwa held on despite a late charge by the German.

In the luge, Hüfner posted the fastest time of 2 mins 46.524 sec over the four runs while Austria’s Nina Reithmayer claimed second at 0.490 sec behind with Germany’s Geisenberger third, 0.577 sec off the pace.

“I am delighted that it worked so well, I am overjoyed to be the Olympic gold medallist – it’s mad,” said Hüfner, who won bronze four years ago in Turin.

“This is exactly what I have worked for over many years. I was nervous before all four runs, but this victory is what I have dreamed about.”

Geisenberger walked away from the start of her fourth run before finally getting underway after a distraction upset her concentration.

“A photographer accidentally set off a flash light at the start which put me off,” she said. “I don’t want to put the guilt for my poor last run on him, it was an accident, these things happen.”

Neuner, meanwhile, reversed the two top spots in the 10km biathlon pursuit after being edged out for second place on the weekend by Slovakia’s Anastazia Kuzmina. This time Neuner powered ahead of the Slovak to take gold, with Frenchwoman Marie Laure Brunet third.

”No one can take this Olympic win away from me. I’ll wear this (medal) until the day I die,” she said afterwards, according to daily Bild.

With just 800 metres to go, Neuner, who is regarded as a strong skier but one who sometimes misses targets in the shooting component, was 15 seconds ahead.

”It was clear to me: all I had to do was stay on the skis.”

She went on to win comfortably.

As defending World Cup 15km champion, Neuner will start as favourite alongside Sweden’s Helena Jonsson and Anna Carin Olofsson-Zidek who are first and second in the overall World Cup rankings.

The athletes start at 30 second intervals and between loops of a cross-country circuit, each racer will stop four times to take five shots at a target 50 meters away, twice each in the prone and standing positions.

In the individual event, the penalty for a miss is one additional minute which is added to the biathletes time and the winner has the fastest overall time.

Speed skater Wolf said after her silver medal win: “I’ll try again in four years … I thought today was the day it would come together but I wasn’t strong enough mentally to pull through.”

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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