Shackleton scoops bronze medal for Great Britain in China Open
TODMORDEN’S MEGAN Shackleton was among the Great Britain team’s medal winners at the PTT China Open in Hangzhou.
Shackleton scooped bronze in the women’s class 4 singles as the British team celebrated a number of medal successes.
The 20-year-old has broken into the world’s top 10 in women’s class 4 after some good performances at the European
“Although I didn’t get the win I think it was a great learning curve I can take going forwards”
Championships in Sweden.
And she showed her continued improvement by twice levelling against the world number two from China Zhou Ying, taking a tight fourth set 12-10 before the Beijing and London Paralympic champion took the match 11-6 in the fifth.
Shackleton secured her place in the semi-finals with a 3-1 win against world number nine Joyce De Oliveira, the Pan American champion from Brazil, and was beaten 3-1 by Gu Xiaodan, the Chinese world number four who went on to take the gold.
“I’m pleased with the way I’ve played so far,” said Shackleton. “To take Zhou so close has given me great confidence; although I didn’t get the win I think it was a great learning curve I can take going forwards and it’s great to be the only other country on the podium alongside China.”
Shackleton narrowly missed out on a team medal when she finished fourth in the women’s class 4 and 5 with teammate Joyce De Oliveira.
The pair won their opening match and then lost a close match to the Korean team of Young A Jung, Oejeong Kang and Mi Kyoung Shin 2-1. They lost 2-0 to the powerful China 1 team of class 5 world number one Zhang Bian, class 4 world number two Zhou Ying and class 5 world number two Pan Jiamin. But they suffered defeat to China 2 in their final roundrobin match.
There were singles silver medals for Jack Hunter-Spivey in men’s class 5 and Ashley Facey-Thompson in men’s class 9. Fliss Pickard (women’s class 6), Joshua Stacey (men’s class 9) and Kim Daybell (men’s class 10) all took bronze. Paisley’s Martin Perry teamed-up with Thomas Rau from Germany to take gold in the men’s class 6 team event. Fliss Pickard and her Korean team partner Seongok Kim took silver in women’s class 6-7 and Jack Hunter-Spivey combined with Kentaro Doi and Toru Nakamoto from Japan to take bronze in men’s class 5.
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