All set for Rio Mark II
Can our Paralympians match what these guys did in Brazil?
AFTER the Team GB gold rush at the Olympics, expect an even greater medal haul from Great Britain’s squad when the Rio Paralympics start next Wednesday.
At London 2012, home athletes won 120 medals, including 34 golds, to finish third behind China and Russia.
UK Sport has set a target range of between 113 and 165 for Rio, and has sent a team of 264 athletes to compete in 19 sports.
The British team have never finished outside the top five in the medal list and, with Russian para-athletes banned, there’s even a chance they might top the table. UK Sport has invested £ 350m of public money into elite sport since 2012, and that was repaid handsomely when Team GB returned from the Olympics with 67 medals, surpassing by two the total at the London Games.
A feature of that unprecedented performance was that many London gold medallists – Mo Farah, Andy Murray, Nicola Adams, Alistair Brownlee, Charlotte Dujardin and Jade Jones among them – successfully defended their titles.
The prospect of that also happening at the para- Games is also high, with London gold-winners David Weir, Richard Whitehead, Aled Davies, Hannah Cockroft and Jonnie Peacock – who famously beat Oscar Pistorius in the battle of the amputees in 2012 – named in the track & field squad.
Wheelchair athlete Weir, known as “The Weirwolf,” won an incredible four golds four years ago and is targeting five this time round.
The British Para- cycling team topped the medal table in London and Dame Sarah Storey, who won four golds, will compete in her seventh Games, having made her debut as a swimmer in Barcelona in 1992.
Storey, now 38, has 11 golds in total and needs one more to surpass Baroness Tan ni GreyT-hompson’ s total.
She is, however, already the most successful British female Paralympian of all time, having also won eight silvers and three bronzes.
Six swimmers – Ellie Simmonds, Ollie Hynd, Josef Craig, Jessica-Jane Applegate, Jon Fox and Bethany Firth – who won gold in 2012 – will look to repeat the feat in Rio.
Simmonds won the nation’s hearts when she collected two golds as a 13- year-old in Beijing before adding two more in London.
Largs- based Abby Kane, who has just turned 13 and is the youngest member of the team, will look to replicate what Simmonds did eight years ago.
In equestrian, Lee Pearson will be aiming to add to his 10-gold-medal haul which started in Sydney 16 years ago, while Sophie Christiansen will be defending the three titles she won in 2012.
Rio is th e 15th modern Paralympic Games, with Rome in 1960 considered the first, although there were events at Stoke Mandeville from 1948.
In all 4,350 athletes from 165 countries – plus a refugee team – are set to compete in 528 medal events. Golf made its Olympic bow in Rio but for the Paralympics the debut sports are triathlon and canoeing.
Channel 4 will cover the event, with up to 19 hours of programming per day.