PARALYMPICS DIARY

PARALYMPICSGB will not disclose why GB table tennis player David Wetherill has been ‘de-selected’ and left behind in the UK. GB officials said Wetherill breached the Para Table Tennis code of conduct but it is unclear if this relates to Covid. Wetherill was due to play doubles with Will Bayley.

GB EQUESTRIANIST Sir Lee Pearson has revealed Prince William engaged him in small talk about horses when he was knighted, saying he wasn’t riding much because of sore hips. Pearson, whose congenital condition means he cannot move his ankles or knees, joked: ‘You can’t complain about your legs around me. That’s just not on!’ Pearson goes for gold in the individual test tomorrow.

AN EVENT to celebrate the six-team Paralympics Refugee Team was uplifting, but it did call Japan’s own reluctance to welcome refugees into question. The nation reportedly received only six last year. Team leader

Ileana Rodriguez diplomatically said: ‘We encourage people who can receive refugees to do so.’

MORE innovation from Channel 4, who have used their Paralympics broadcast rights to champion those with disabilities. They have worked with the Royal National Institute of Blind People to produce adverts which will be visually distorted and hard to see, to demonstrate the viewing reality for those with sight loss. Four advertisers are participating, providing an audio description of what they are promoting.

FEW here have more extraordinary backstories than US swimmer Haven Shepherd, 18. She was 14 months old when her parents strapped a bomb to themselves and held her in their arms, in an attempted suicide in Vietnam. Her parents were killed but she survived, having both her legs amputated below the knee. ‘I only lost my legs,’ she said. ‘I could

have lost my life.’