Lightning star to miss World Cup

LOUGHBOROUGH Lightning Wheelchair Basketball captain Robyn Love has announced her international retirement.

It means the 32-year-old Scot has been left out of the Great Britain Women’s squad for next month’s Wheelchair Basketball World Championships.

Love featured at the Rio and Tokyo Paralympics and helped Britain win silver at the 2018 World Championships and European Championships in 2019 and 2021, captaining the side at the last of those tournaments.

Recently, Love and her partner, GB team-mate Laurie Williams, became parents to baby Alba.

She said: “I’m so grateful for the opportunity that I have had to represent Great Britain, something that I never thought possible.

“Growing up with a disability, I never knew I could play sport at the highest level.

“When I saw it during the London 2012 Paralympics, I knew that that was what I was meant to do. Four years later, I was doing it.”

Love, who was born with arthrogryposis, a rare condition in which the muscles are shortened, will continue to play domestically for Loughborough Lightning, as well as developing her coaching skills.

Loughborough Lightning trio Lucy Robinson, Siobhán Fitzpatrick and Maddie Martin have all been included in the GB Women’s squad.

Robinson and Fitzpatrick both boast international experience while Martin is expected to make her GB debut.

Great Britain’s men are the defending world champions, having won the title in 2018 in Germany.

GB’s men are in the same group as the United States, Iran and Iraq, while the women will play Brazil, Canada, China, Australia and Spain.

The world championships are part of the qualification process for next year’s Paralympics, with the top four countries earning a spot for their zones in Paris.

If a European country is among the top four, it would mean the winners of August’s European Championships in Rotterdam would qualify for the Paralympics.