Toumarkin takes home a silver for Israel

The 18-year-old clocked a time of 55.28 seconds, touching the wall 12 hundredths of a second after China’s Jianbin He.

By ALLON SINAI
Yakov Toumarkin gave Israel its second Youth Olympics medal in as many days on Monday, finishing second in the 100-meter backstroke final in Singapore.
The 18-year-old clocked a time of 55.28 seconds, touching the wall 12 hundredths of a second after China’s Jianbin He.
Less than an hour later, Toumarkin, who won gold and bronze medals at the European Junior Swimming Championships last month, came within 85 hundredths of a bronze medal in the 200m individual medley, finishing fourth in a time of 2:03.44 minutes.
Toumarkin’s excellent performance came 24 hours after Gili Haimovitz claimed Israel’s first gold medal at the inaugural Youth Olympics after his Iranian opponent in the final of the taekwondo under-48 kilogram competition was forced to withdraw due to political reasons.
New Zealand earned its first medal of the Youth Olympics when Aaron Barclay won the gold Monday in men’s triathlon.
Barclay won the race – a 750-meter swim, 20-kilometer bike ride and 5-kilometer run – in 54 minutes, 41 seconds, 14 seconds ahead of Kevin McDowell of the United States and 23 seconds better than Alois Knable of Australia.
Barclay claimed victory in front of his parents, grandparents and Hamish Carter, who won the gold for New Zealand at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
“He was great,” Carter said. “It’s a fantastic result.”
This is the first Youth Olympics, a 12-day event in which 3,600 athletes aged 14 to 18 from 204 national Olympic committees compete in 26 sports.
Youth Olympics organizers have sought to emphasize the educational and cultural benefits of bringing together teenage athletes from around the world so they are not keeping a medal tally.
In an unofficial medal tally, Russia leads with 11, followed by China with eight and the United States and Italy with five each after the second day of competition.


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