It was a golden day for one particular room in the athletes’ village at the Paralympic Games on Monday. Great Britain’s Ellie Challis and Louise Fiddes, firm friends and rooming together in Paris, won golds within minutes of each other at La Défense Arena as ParalympicsGB’s fine Games in the pool continued.
The 20-year-old Challis, GB’s youngest medal winner at the Tokyo Games, was dominant in the women’s S3 50m backstroke, touching the wall in 53.56sec, almost five seconds ahead of her nearest rival. “This has been the most incredible day ever,” she told Channel 4. “It’s a dream come true.”
While Challis was on her way to gold, Fiddes watched nervously in the warmup area. “I was on the edge of my seat even though she won it by a mile,” said the 23-year-old, whose women’s SB14 100m breaststroke final came just 14 minutes after her friend’s race. “I thought: ‘If she can do it I can do it.’”
And do it she did, though it was a battle, Fiddes doggedly holding off the Borges Carneiro sisters, Débora and Beatriz, on the final length to win in 1min 15.47sec. “I genuinely can’t believe it. There were so many years when it felt my dream was slipping away,” said an emotional Fiddes, post-race. “It was pure determination.”
The pregnant Para-archer Jodie Grinham and Nathan Macqueen sealed GB gold by beating Iran 155-151 in the mixed-team compound final.
Grinham – who is seven months pregnant – clinched her second Paris medal after beating teammate Phoebe Paterson Pine to win the women’s individual compound bronze on Saturday.
“All I wanted to do at the end was jump up and down and cry and scream and shout,” Grinham told BBC Wales.
“But being heavily pregnant, realistically the best thing to do was crouch down and take a second and then I could give hugs and things. The emotion was just a wave and it was like being a child at Christmas and getting your favourite toy.”
Dan Bethell came within one point of a Paralympic badminton gold but eventually had to settle for silver – just as he did at the Tokyo Games – after the narrowest of defeats to India’s Kumar Nitesh in the final of the SL3 men’s singles.
Bethell, the No 2 seed, lost the first set 21-14 to the top-ranked Nitesh but battled back to take the second 21-18 and set up a decider. The British player saved one match point at 19-20 down then set up one of his own at 21-20 but he could not seal the deal and Nitesh reeled off three points in succession to take the gold.
It means Britain’s wait for a badminton gold at the Paralympics goes on, though Krysten Coombs has the chance to end that wait on Monday evening in the final of the SH6 men’s singles.
“It feels devastating,” said Bethell. “I came here for that gold. I got the silver in Tokyo and it was my ambition from the start to go one better but I just couldn’t get it over the line today.”
Elsewhere at the Porte de la Chapelle Arena, Nigeria’s Mariam Bolaji became the first African athlete to win a badminton medal at a Games – Olympics or Paralympics – when she clinched bronze in the women’s singles SL3.
At Roland Garros, Great Britain’s Gordon Reid and Alfie Hewett both eased into the men’s wheelchair tennis singles quarter-finals. Reid, who beat his teammate in the gold medal match at the Rio 2016 Games, cruised into the last eight with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Japan’s Takuya Miki, while Hewett, the No 1 seed, had to work a touch harder against the No 16 seed Daisuke Arai, coming through 7-5, 6-2 on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
There were defeats, though, for Andy Lapthorne and Greg Slade in the quad singles, and Lucy Shuker in the women’s singles.
And there was disappointment for the ParalympicsGB wheelchair rugby team, who missed out on a medal after a 50-48 defeat to Australia in the bronze medal match.
“If you’d have asked me two years ago, I’d have probably snatched your hand off for the experience of playing for a bronze medal,” said the GB captain, Gavin Walker. “In the end there were too many errors really in the game. So the better team beat us on the day.”
