Four-medals and counting for Tai
Alice Tai is having a Paralympics to remember, the British swimmer having won two gold medals, a silver and a bronze – and she still has another event to go, Saturday’s 100m butterfly.
If you’d told her in 2022 that she’d experience this level of success, she’d most likely have laughed. It was then that she had her right leg amputated from below the knee because the clubfoot with which she was born was causing her so much pain.
That, then, meant that the 25-year-old effectively had to relearn how to swim – and in the earliest stages of her return to the pool, she had her doubts that she’d ever get back to the kind of form that won her a bronze in Rio and multiple world titles.
“I called my coach and I was like, ‘I am going to have to retire, I am not getting back down to my times, I am 20 seconds off in the 100m, I’m swimming really slowly.’”
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But?
“It turns out I was swimming in a 33m pool, not a 25m pool and I hadn’t realised. I was doing 30 per cent more distance than I was meant to.”
It’s as well she didn’t retire.
Metelka tips his hat to unlucky Atkinson
We’ve seen plenty of athletes suffer misfortune in Paris, but near the top of ‘the unluckiest’ list must surely come British cyclist Archie Atkinson who crashed with just two laps to go in the 4000m individual pursuit when he was leading Slovakia’s Jozef Metelka by six seconds. Atkinson had to settle for silver in the end.
All of which prompted perhaps the most honest post-gold-medal-winning interview with any Paralympian at these Games.
“I won with massive luck, come on,” said Metelka. “The luck is like from here to the Eiffel Tower and back. Clearly, he’s a better rider, he’s stronger, I was six seconds down – you don’t recover from there. I won because Archie fell. I was incredibly lucky. I mean, when was the last time something like this happened? When T-Rex was around?”
Cyprus pays homage to Karolina
How excited was the Cyprus’s Paralympic Committee about Karolina Pelendritou winning a bronze medal, at her sixth Paralympics, in the SB11 100 metres breaststroke on Thursday night? Very.
Their statement: “Cyprus, do you understand what a compatriot of ours has done? Cyprus, have you understood that from the loudspeakers of a packed stadium here at La Defense Arena, there was a special mention of her name? Cyprus, have you realised that Karolina Pelendritou has won two more medals? There is a whole rest of the planet which has bowed down to the talent, to the single-mindedness, to the strength, to the will of Karolina Pelendritou!”
Sweet, Karolina.
Word of mouth
“Cyclists, we’re a weird bunch – the worse it is, the more we want of it.” – After he and Mitchell McLaughlin finished eighth in Friday’s gruelling Road Race, Damien Vereker (44) insisted he’d be back for more in LA. A weird bunch, all right.
In numbers
8 – Four gold, four silver, that’s how many Paralympic medals Katie-George Dunlevy now has. Some career.
Persistence pays for Britain’s Bywater
Having been on the losing side in Paralympic semi-finals in 2004, 2008, 2016 and 2020, Terry Bywater was a touch on the elated side when Britain beat Germany to reach the final of the wheelchair basketball event against the United States tomorrow.
Reflecting on that losing streak before the Games, Bywater made mention of another sportsman who has struggled to collect silverware during his career.
“I don’t want to be the Harry Kane of wheelchair basketball,” he said. Poor Harry.
