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Golden Kliugin singing in rain as Sotomayor bags silver in his last
Olympics = = SYDNEY, Sept 24 (AFP) - Russia's Sergey Kliugin upstaged his more-heralded compatriot Vyacheslav Voronin to win the Olympic men's high jump title here Sunday in driving rain. Cuba's world record holder Javier Sotomayor claimed the silver medal behind Kliugin before announcing that this was his last appearance at the Olympic Games. On a night when the competition disappointed because of difficult weather conditions, Kliugin took gold as the only man able to clear 2.35 metres. Sotomayor's 2.32m was equalled by Algeria's Abderrahmane Hammad but the north African had to settle for the bronze behind the Cuban as he had more failures during the competition. After collecting his silver medal Sotomayor announced that this was his final Olympic appearance. "I only intend to compete for one more year," he said. "I'm doing that because I spent the last year out due to the sanctions. "The ban affected me psychologically. "But I am happy with this. Of course, I hoped to jump better, but the weather - the wind and the rain - were against me." Kluigin was singing in the rain, however. "I thought the rain helped me," said Kliugin, whose best previous performance had been a victory in the 1998 European Cup. "It was God's role." Sotomayor, Cuba's 1992 Olympic champion, cleared 2.32m and so won the silver medal less than two months after controversially being reinstated to competition after a doping offence when his two-year ban was halved. A swirling, blustery wind, made it difficult for most of the athletes to judge their jumps. When it began to rain an hour into the event, deteriorating into a storm before the finish, the competition became more a test of control in the cold than of cool athleticism. Voronin, Russia's world champion, struggled with his run-up. After two failures at 2.29m, the pre-event favourite got everything wrong at the next height, 2.32, and was eliminated, medal-less. "We told Sergey that the important thing tonight was to get his first jump clear," Valentin Balaknichev, the Russia team manager, said. "Until today, it was always Voronin. Sergey was always the second in the team. Maybe that will change now." World record-holder Sotomayor, after a flawless performance at 2.25 and then 2.32, faltered with the bar at 2.35. The Cuban was allowed to compete again in time to compete at the Olympics, after serving only half of a two-year ban following a positive test for cocaine at last year's PanAm Games in Canada. A special case was made for Sotomayor, following personal intervention by the president of Cuba, Fidel Castro.
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