After 5 paralympic games, 16 years and 3 sports, I can finally say that I’m a Paralympic Gold Medallist! There had been some very close moments in Athens but today things were finally perfect for me and I claimed my gold medal!

After the disappointment of Friday I took it very easy yesterday and completely zoned in on recovering and relaxing for today. I slept a lot better last night and I was relatively calm through out the night. The morning started out cool and I was the first competitor at the venue this morning. I took a few extra moments to take it in a to really appreciated the beauty of it and how lucky I was to be here with the opportunity ahead of me.

The race started out exactly as I thought it would. I allowed Alehandro to set the pace up the first hill and we went from 11 to 4 in 30 seconds! I was a bit edgy and threw in a few quick attacks and noticed the 3 other guys kinda looked at each other to see who would chase me down. We played a bit of cat and mouse but we maintained at a fast pace. On the backstretch I had some reminisce of a day in Alaska last year were Alehandro and Oz teamed up against me and they broke me with ease. They were up to their tactics again where one would block me and the other would get a way and I have to accelerate and close the gap. I thought that I would rather race a pro-active than a re-active race and waited for the right opportunity to make it mine. Up the hill on the second lap one of our team coaches shouted that the rider from Spain was in trouble so I picked up the pace and pretty soon I gapped the field. I settled into a comfortable rhythm and decided that rather than play stop and go games with the riders from the states I would ride at my own pace and make them work. I knew they would eventually catch me but I had to take as much out of them as I could while taking care of myself. As the course is very winding I used this to my advantage and each time they could not see me I would accelerate up the hills to increase the lead. This worked for me and at the top of the final climb with 10k to go I had around 20 seconds on them. I stuck to my strategy and when they finally caught up to me going up the last drag towards the finish I had enough energy left in my tank to do one more surge and to claim the lead going into the very technical last kilometer. I stayed calm and just kept the pace so that they could not come past as I knew that to lead into the last 180 degree turn would be very beneficial. We took the turn with serious speed and I went around on two wheels, Oz dropped his chain and Alehandro had to go very wide. All three of us almost stopped but I still came out ahead and I put the hammer down and sprinted with everything I had winning by about 2 bike lengths. We did the 50k course in 1 hour 21 min that translated to a faster average speed than I had for the one lap Time Trial on Friday!

I did the medal ceremony and went through doping control and finally made it back to the village. I was completely exhausted and every muscle that worked went into spasm. After a nice long shower and massage I was finally on my own and I could appreciate that I had achieved a goal that took 16 years to complete!

I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to compete in the marathon in two days but I will have to see how my body recovers in the next to days before I make the final decision.