Triumphant Mcfadden is on top of the world again
Fourth gold comes just months after operation Kinghorn and Lyle take GB medal tally to 22
‘I would go to the track but just sit there crying as I didn’t know if I would be able to come back’
She led from the front, as she has done her entire life – forging her own path, breaking new ground.
That the T54 800m world title would end up in her grasp seemed inevitable; preordained to complete her mission of four gold medals in four events.
History has never before produced a para athlete in the Tatyana Mcfadden mould. No one as obscenely dominant over quite so many distances for such an extended period of time.
But few have experienced even a fraction that she has – abandoned in a Russian orphanage for the first six years of her life, paralysed from the waist down and forced to walk on her hands before she was adopted by an American diplomat.
Having survived that – and doctors’ warnings that she would likely not even live to see her 10th birthday – the obstacles overcome to win an astronomical seven Paralympic and 16 world titles seem almost trivial. After all, what does another gold medal really mean? When she finally sits back to reflect on her achievements, will the four gold medals Mcfadden won in London over the past week even register?
Or will she instead focus on her role in fighting for the rights of people with disabilities in the United States – most specifically the law that means no pupil, whether with disabilities or otherwise, may be denied the right to take part in school sports?
The truth is the two are intrinsically linked. The activism would not be possible without the medals, and it was in such knowledge that she lined up at the London Stadium last night. That she was only attempting to win her fourth gold medal of the week as opposed to the six she claimed at the 2013 Para Athletics World Championships was a result of her hospitalisation just three months ago for a series of opmonths erations to remove blood clots. Laid low for a month post-surgery, she could so easily have written off the season as she sat in tears of despair. Instead, she had already won 200m, 400m and 1500m gold medals before even attempting to add the icing on the cake last night.
Arm muscles rippling through the white skinsuit underneath her blue Team USA top, she wasted no time in surging ahead of her rivals, pulling clear from the gun and never looking back.
By the halfway point her advantage had grown to five metres and the lead only widened. Victory came in one minute 47.82 seconds, with Switzerland’s Manuela Schaer a distant second and Amanda Mcgrory, of United States, third. “My goal was just to be here and make it to the finals but the last two of training have been incredible,’’ said Mcfadden, 28.
Meanwhile, Samantha Kinghorn won bronze in the T54 400m and Maria Lyle took bronze in the 100m T35 final to raise GB’S medal tally to 22, with 11 gold medals, third in the table behind China and the USA.