Great Britain have won another two medals in the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. In difficult conditions, Menna Fitzpatrick claimed bronze in the women’s super combined visually impaired class, adding to the silver that she won with guide Gary Smith in the Super-G on Sunday, while Neil Simpson followed up his earlier gold with a third place of his own.
Fitzpatrick now has six Paralympic medals. Afterwards she said: “We left ourselves a bit of work to do in slalom and the plan paid off, of going out there and putting down a pretty decent run, so we are super, super happy.”
Ahead of Fitzpatrick, Slovakia’s Henrieta Farkasova won her 11th Paralympics gold, with Zhu Daqing of China taking silver as the hosts continued to dominate the medal table. Britain’s Millie Knight just missed out on the medals in fourth place.
The slalom stage of Monday’s combined events was delayed by half an hour, before a series of crashes affected favourites across the events, including in the men’s super combined visually impaired class, where Simpson, guided by his brother Andrew, finished with a bronze medal.
“Coming into the slalom we knew we had to charge, and we had nothing to lose going in to the second run,” said 19-year-old Neil. “I skied a lot of slalom when I was younger as you have no choice growing up in Scotland and it’s something I really enjoy. I was so tired after the gold medal yesterday I just had some food and went to bed so we were in the right mindset today.”
A crash by leader Hyacinthe Deleplace of France on the final slalom run of the competition left Italy’s Giacomo Bertagnolli the winner and the British brothers in third.
Canada’s three-times defending champion Brian McKeever won the gruelling long-distance cross-country visually impaired event again to claim the 14th Winter Paralympic gold medal of a glittering career. It is the 42-year-old’s sixth appearance at a Winter Paralympics.
Ukraine’s Oksana Shyshkova won her second gold of these Games with victory in the women’s equivalent. She finished almost a minute ahead of the rest of the competitors. Natalie Wilkie of Canada made it a double celebration for the Canadians with gold in the women’s cross-country standing long-distance.
France’s Cécile Hernandez had to win a court battle over her classification to compete in Beijing after the International Paralympic Committee removed her LL1 class from these Games, and she was rewarded with a gold medal in the LL2 snowboard cross. China took a clean sweep of the podium in the men’s SB-UL event, with Ji Lijia taking gold. Matti Suur-Hamari of Finland, the World and Paralympic champion, defended his men’s SB-LL2 title won in Pyeongchang.
Britain’s wheelchair curlers won their first match of the day, a 15-1 rout of Switzerland in the morning session at the Beijing National Aquatics Centre, but a 7-3 defeat by Slovakia later on means they now have two wins and two losses, and sit joint-fifth in the round robin table alongside Estonia and Slovakia. Only the top four teams progress in the tournament. Great Britain face Estonia and Sweden in Tuesday’s matches.
China have now won seven golds, eight silver and 10 bronze medals in the first three days of sport. The combined total of 25 medals is more than double that of Canada, who have taken 12 medals so far and are the only other country to have racked up a double-figures tally. Ukraine continue to sit second in the medal table.
Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, has thanked the International Olympic Committee and its president, Thomas Bach, for their role in awarding and helping host the Games, saying China has delivered on its promise of a “simple, safe and splendid” event. The IOC was widely criticised for giving China the right to host given its human rights record, and in the wake of the treatment of the tennis player Peng Shuai. The US and UK were among nations who staged a diplomatic boycott of last month’s Winter Olympics.
