It was like Britannia rules the waves at the Last Night of the Proms, the best small‑boat showing since Dunkirk, the sort of result to which even Francis Drake would have to tip his silken cap. Four finals, four medals, three golds and one silver: Britain did quite well in the Paralympic rowing on Sunday.
The individual performances themselves were historic. Lauren Rowles became the first woman to have won a rowing gold at three Paralympic Games. The mixed coxed four extended their unbeaten run (ie the team have not lost a single race) to a whopping 14 years.
Ben Pritchard, who came fifth in Tokyo, beat the world-record holder, and an Italian with an illegal communications device, to claim gold in the PR1 men’s sculls. Rounding out the crews were the PR3 mixed sculls double of Sam Murray and Annie Caddick, who claimed silver in a fierce contest despite coming together only a year ago.
Racing with a new partner in Gregg Stevenson in the PR2 mixed sculls, Rowles, still only 26, had to hold off an unrelenting challenge from the Chinese to claim victory. But in doing so she felt the fulfilment of a dream. Rowles has no feeling below her chest and is also a rare LGBTQ+ athlete in her sport. She said it had long been her ambition to achieve historic success so as to provide representation for people like herself.
“This is definitely the best one yet,” she said. “To do it a third time in a row. Nobody’s ever done this before, what feels better than making history, right?
“I felt when I was growing up that I didn’t have that representation, being a queer, disabled person. When I was growing up I had an identity crisis, I didn’t see that in the public eye and there is stigma around it. Being queer and being disabled, you don’t want to be both of those things.
“When I became disabled I was so ashamed of that, I wanted to hide away from the world. But I went and watched London [2012] and I thought: ‘This is what life is about.’ I got my goal again and when I went out to Rio it just ignited something back within me. I sat there, and I looked at the people around me, and I saw greatness among me and ever since then I’ve been thinking about making history.
“So to do it today, to put us on the map, not only as a small sport but for all the LGBTQ young people out there to know that, it is OK if you’re a little bit of an outcast, that means everything.”
The coxed four faced stiffer competition than they are used to in a sport that, like many other Paralympic events, is experiencing a boom in performance levels. But the British boat held off the USA to win by more than three seconds and Giedre Rakauskaite, who was also part of the team in Tokyo, said the accrued knowledge from sustained success is what keeps them going.
“It’s been 14 years but I think that every single year adding up has been pushing us on,” she said. “We’ve been taking trust from teammates before us. There was always an overlap of at least one or two teammates from previous Games. We just draw everything we can from them and we keep pushing on and trying to make them proud as well as our friends and family.”
For Rakauskaite, who came to the UK from Lithuania as a student in 2011, the victory came on the 18th anniversary of the incident that caused her to lose the use of a leg. “I was in a car accident that has led me to being a Paralympic athlete,” she said. “It is an anniversary and I’m going to celebrate it now with a gold medal. I’ve turned it around.”
As for Pritchard, his was perhaps the most popular success of the day. The charismatic Welshman was a triathlete until a cycling accident left him paralysed below the waist, but he almost immediately repurposed his athletic passion into para-rowing and has spent the past three years since his Tokyo debut working out how to win.
At the Vaires-Sur-Marne Nautical Stadium he roared past Roman Polianskyi, champion at the previous two Games, and the Italian pacemaker Giacomo Perini, who was later disqualified for using his phone to track the field during the race.
“I actually don’t know how far ahead I was, because I was so in my lane,,” said Pritchard, who won by more than 10sec from Polianskyi. “I knew I had the gold medal position, but I didn’t know the gap because I was just trying to focus on me and Roman.
“When I came back from Tokyo I was ready to give it up, because with deregulation of [the PR1 classification] I just thought I was going to go backwards. But we went away and worked at it. We looked at our boat weight, we’ve created a new seat, I’ve dropped 20 kilos in body mass.
“There’s been a huge project around this and it’s culminated in success today, so it’s great that we’re back on our top step. Now I guess we’re just going to work on staying there for LA and beyond.”
