The absence of London 2012 gold medallists Russian Federation left Ukraine, world and European champions and runners-up four years ago, as strong favourites for the title in Rio. In contrast, Nigeria’s Paralympic team winning eight gold medals has been largely overlooked. These athletes, though they don’t garner the media attention of the Olympians, are deserving of praise.
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It capped a terrible week for the star of London 2012, who failed to get a medal of any colour in the defence of his track titles – though he still has the marathon tomorrow (Sat).
“I was thrilled to get the Gold on Wednesday as the individual was definitely the main one, you want to be the Paralympic champion, but with the team as well – we’re under a lot of pressure and it was a massive amount of teamwork and a massive score, so very proud”. He took the gold medal in the men’s 54kg Powerlifting event.
Britain won gold in an 11th sport when archer John Walker triumphed in the men’s individual compound. A similar fate happened to Helena who was a talented handball player of Koka from Varaždin, being injured as a pedestrian when she was 17, confined to a wheelchair since.
Hannah Cockroft headlined day nine’s athletic coverage as she aimed to win the fifth Paralympic gold of her career, and complete a golden treble in Rio.
Ejike Lucy: The team Nigeria’s captain set a Paralympic and World record by winning the women’s 61kg powerlifting event with 138kg lift.
ParalympicsGB chef de mission Penny Briscoe said: “To reach 50 gold medals is a phenomenal achievement by the whole team”.
Despite the non – payment of the monitary reward entitled to her when President Mohammadu Buhari rewarded Nigeria’s outstanding sportsmen and women in January, Lauritta Onye, a 1.25ft tall athlete, who specialises in field events discus and shot-put has remained undaunted. She lifted 140kg to equate the Paralympics records.
It’s a repeat of her performance at the 2012 London games where she did the same thing.
DAME Sarah Storey triumphed once again and won Great Britain’s 60th gold medal of the Rio Paralympics.
After golds in archery, boccia and wheelchair tennis on Friday, Britain now have gold medals in 11 sports.
Cooke dedicated her wins to the memory of her father.
The veteran of three Paralympic Games, who lost her right leg to cancer when aged just two, endured a disrupted lead-in to Rio that included surgery on each shoulder and a change in coach to Nathan Doyle. The 32-year-old Javelin thrower dominated the whole scene by beating the world record of 18.86m by 2m. Scoring highly throughout the test, the pair were awarded some great scores for horse/rider harmony and choreography to see a final score of 77.850% come through which put them into the Gold medal position ahead of The Netherland’s Rixt Van Der Horst.
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Ukrainians offered a better performance early into the match while Iran began posing threats on the rival’s goal from the tenth minute.
