Benjamin Boukpeti of Togo breaks his paddle as he celebrates bronze in men's kayak (K1) final this week. [Agencies] |
Benjamin Boukpeti of Togo slammed his paddle in the frothy water to celebrate his and his country's accomplishment.
Boukpeti, 26, Tuesday won the bronze medal in the single-seat slalom kayak event, the first ever Olympic medal for Togo, a country he visited once as a child.
He finished behind German Alexander Grimm and French Fabien Lefevre, clocking 87.37 seconds.
Boukpeti was born in France and speaks French. He lives in Toulouse, France. He developed through a program in France and represented France as a junior. A shoulder injury ended his career there.
He is the son of a Togolese father and a French mother. Under Olympic rules, that is enough to allow him to represent the African nation. It not only made qualifying for the Olympics easier, it made it possible.
Had Boukpeti stuck with his country of birth, he would have found himself competing against the 2004 Olympic Champion Benoit Peschier, the former two-time World Champion Fabien Lefevre, and the current World Champion Sebastien Combot just to get a chance at a single spot on the Olympic team.
In Togo, he had no opposition.
He breezed through the African Championship - beating a British man trying the same in Nigeria - and gained an otherwise unobtainable Olympic berth.
Togo was glad to have him. The country has been in the Games since 1972 but has never won a medal.
He already represented Togo in the Athens Games but failed to win a medal. He finished 18th in the semi-final in 2004 and, this time around, no one was even giving him a chance before the race. His world ranking was a lowly 56th.
Boukpeti produced a blistering first run, stealing first place by just a hundredth of a second. The pressmen turned to each other, muttering "who is this guy?" and tapped his name into Google.
The crowd wildly cheered on Boukpeti as he neared the end of the whitewater course. As he finished his bronze-metal run on the slalom course in Shunyi, he slapped hands with fans from his kayak. His paddle snapped.
"I really don't know yet what this quite represents," Boukpeti said though a translator.
On the medal stand, he kissed his fists before he thrust them into the air on the medal stand and hopped up and down several times before the medal was placed around his neck, his parents watching nearby.
"I tried to give people some entertainment," he said. "I tried to make them vibrate a little."
The Togolese had a difficult start, coming in 20th during the first qualifying round before rising to the eighth place.
Boukpeti was the last competitor to negotiate his one-man kayak through the strategically placed gates, and the crowd was behind him from the start. His ride was clean and his combined time was 173.45 seconds.
Agencies