Thomas Young celebrated his 26th birthday in perfect fashion by storming to Commonwealth Games gold in the T38 100m after a dominant display in Glasgow.
Thomas Young celebrated a birthday to savour by scorching to Commonwealth gold. The Loughborough sprint star, who turned 26 the day of his race on Monday, grabbed T38 100m glory with a dominant display in Glasgow.
Young stopped the clock in a season’s best 11.11 to beat Australian Ullrich Muller and Canadian Zachary Gingras to gold on a speedy Scotstoun track. The Tokyo Paralympic champion was forced to withdraw from the Games in Birmingham four years ago after suffering bone and ligament damage.
But he resiliently bounced back in style and was relishing the prospect of celebrating a special day in Scotland. Asked if this was his best birthday ever, he said: “It probably is!
“It was really tough to pull out of Birmingham, so to deal with that and then bouncing back was a really long road. I have a brilliant support team that made that all possible.
“I’m eyeing up my birthday cake when I get back to the hotel now!”
Young is one of 251 Team England athletes here in Glasgow supported by National Lottery funding, with Sport England investment for Glasgow totalling an approximate 9.5m.
The East Midlands ace is now a Paralympic, European and Commonwealth gold medallist – and will be gunning for world glory when the championships take place in Uzbekistan next summer.
Young bagged a battling global bronze in India towards the end of last year after disappointingly missing out on a medal at the Paris Paralympics. And he turned that bronze into gold in front of a vocal Scotstoun – the home of Glasgow Warriors – crowd on Monday night.
These Games in Scotland almost never took place and Young hailed the organisers for keeping the Commonwealth spirit alive.
“The crowd were so supportive of everyone tonight,” he said.
“It was amazing that Scotland came in and really helped the athletes out. It’s an unreal feeling – the Commonwealth Games are like a mini Paralympic Games and hopefully this can happen for many more years to come.”
Thanks to National Lottery players, more than £33m is raised every week for good causes. It’s because of you that sport, arts, heritage and community projects, as well as our athletes competing at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, are supported across the UK.