The 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games have come to an end. Goalball Women’s National Team returned from Tokyo with a gold medal.
According to the ECO Cultural Institute, Sevda-Sevtap Altınoluk, who won the gold medal with the Goalball Women’s National Team at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games, brought great joy to Turkey and made their names in history.
Sevda Altunoluk became the star of the team with the goals she scored. She brought the victory by recording all the goals of the crescent and star stars. The national athlete became the top scorer in the games she completed with 46 goals. Altınoluk sisters talked about their experiences during the games.
Sevda explained that she had a dream with her sister Sevtap before the games started and said, “We said that we will be champions together and we will raise the star and crescent flag together. After the final match was over, we said, ‘We succeeded in this.’ ” she said.
Stating that they gave up a lot in order to be successful as an athlete, Sevda said: "On the sixth day of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games, we lost to the USA 4-3 in our last match in Group D. But losing brought us to ourselves. We never lost faith in each other. We saw our mistakes. In the final, we wanted this, that flag will be raised in Tokyo 2020 as it was raised in Rio 2016. We forgot the defeat and immediately looked at other matches. Our only goal was to become the champion by not making our mistakes again. We succeeded in that. We made a promise to each other. We fulfilled that promise. At the end of the match, we hugged each other and cried with happiness. It was our biggest dream to get the same medal with my sister, to have the flag raised and our National Anthem to be sung.”
National athlete Sevtap Altınoluk said that his sister introduced him to goalball. Sevtap, 26, stated that she was promoted to the national team with the support of her older sister and coach.
Goalball Women’s National Team won the second consecutive Olympic title by defeating the USA at the Paralympic Games.