Wednesday, August 16, 2023, 10:33 am | Updated 10:46 a.m.
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Ricardo Ten lost his arms at the elbows and a leg when he was 8 years old. His love for his sport increased even more since then and he first tried swimming and later track cycling. In this last discipline, he won the gold medal in the individual time trial of the C1 category on August 10 at the Adapted Cycling World Championships, held in the United Kingdom. It was an unappealable victory: he covered the 16.8 kilometers in 25 minutes and 3 seconds. Six seconds less than the silver medal.
The Valencian rider was enjoying success on the podium when he observed perplexed, but never losing his smile at the feat achieved that, in addition to the gold medal that was hung around his neck, a UCI representative presented him with! a wrist watch! The scene was immediately reported on social networks. “An unfortunate gift for a world champion”, “A watch to a person without arms!”.
The runner, very happy because he has won four medals in this event, took it with humor and fled from the controversy. In fact, he ended up wearing it over his elbow, flaunting the watch and proud to have received the same award as world road champions Mathieu van der Poel and Lotte Kopecky from Belgium. “Well, I love that they gave away the same watches,” he said on his networks. And when they ask him sarcastically on his Instagram account “what time is it?”, he answers without hesitation: “The time of the world champion.”
The cyclist also echoed the controversy, assuring: «I am very freaked out that this anecdote has gone viral. I’m having a great time reading your comments, there are some very clever ones… My goodness, the one that got involved». And he concluded: “It is surprising that a simple fact becomes more viral than the results obtained.”
For twenty-two years, Ricardo Ten had a successful career as a Paralympic swimmer with more than one hundred titles as Spanish champion, thirteen European championships, seven world championships and three gold medals in the Paralympic Games. However, after a string of successes, in 2017 the athlete decided to change the pool for the pedals.
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2023-08-16 08:46:42
#unfortunate #gift #cyclist #arms #World #Cup #wrist #watch
