Great Britain opened their campaign at the Winter Paralympics with a bronze for Millie Knight and her guide, Brett Wild, in the first medal event in Beijing. Knight finished third in the visually impaired category of the women’s downhill Alpine skiing behind Henrieta Farkasova of Slovakia, who claimed her 10th Paralympic gold medal.
Knight said: “This bronze is something very special. It ranks above our silver four years ago in Pyeongchang. We have gone through some tough things and it has changed us. Crossing the line with a smile on my face was our No 1 goal. I feel like I’m on cloud nine and I just genuinely can’t believe that this is happening to us.”
Britain’s Menna Fitzpatrick finished fifth while the silver medal went to Zhu Daqing, the first individual medal won at a Winter Paralympics by a Chinese athlete. The hosts made a strong start with eight medals in total, including Liu Zixu and Guo Yujie securing golds in biathlon events.
The most emotional scenes of the day were at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre, where Grygorii Vovchynskyi took Ukraine’s first gold of the Games. “I was thinking before the race, I must try to do everything for Ukraine,” he said. “I must think about war, about my country, about my people, about my president.
“I love Ukraine. I love sport, but today I ran because I want life in Ukraine to move to the future.”
Vovchynskyi was warmly congratulated by the silver medallist, Marco Maier of Germany, who finished about 45 seconds behind. The German Paralympic committee described their achievements as “medals for peace” in a tweet.
Vovchynskyi’s Ukrainian compatriots Liudmyla Liashenko and Taras Rad also picked up biathlon silver medals during the day’s session, which ended with another gold for Ukraine as Oksana Shyshkova emulated her teammate to win the women’s sprint for visually impaired athletes.
Ukraine went on to sweep the podium in the men’s vision impaired sprint biathlon, with Vitaliy Lukyanenko winning their third gold in front of his countrymen Oleksandr Kazik and Dmytro Suiarko.
There was also a Ukrainian element to the victory of Oksana Masters in the women’s biathlon sitting sprint. Masters was born in Ukraine and settled in the US, the nation she competes for, after she was adopted. Just hours before the competition she posted to her social media that “it has been difficult to find my passion and desire to compete at these Games amid the war my home country of Ukraine is enduring. I feel selfish, helpless, and guilty for being here.”
The gold adds to the two she won in Pyeongchang and the two in the para cycling at the Covid-delayed Tokyo 2020 Summer Paralympics.
The men’s vision impaired downhill Alpine skiing was won by Austria’s Johannes Aigner who, at 16, is one of the youngest athletes competing in these Games. He edged out the defending champion, Mac Marcoux of Canada, by 0.36sec. Aigner, one of five skiing siblings, three of whom have visual impairments, first took to the slopes aged four.
There was a surprise in the women’s standing event as the eight-time Paralympic champion and favourite, Marie Bochet of France, crashed out while attempting to defend her title. The gold went to Canada’s Mollie Jepsen. There was joy for another French competitor, though: Arthur Bauchet finally has a gold in the men’s downhill standing, having secured four silver medals in Pyeongchang.
In Beijing last month, New Zealand won their first gold medals at winter sports, but they have a greater track record in para sports. Corey Peters secured the country’s 17th all-time gold medal in para skiing, completing his set that included silver in Sochi and bronze in Pyeongchang. He described winning the men’s downhill sitting as “the icing on the cake” of his career. “I risked everything on that run just then,” he said. “That was probably the run of my life.”
These Games feature 564 Para athletes, matching the record for participation set at Pyeongchang in 2018. The number would have been higher but for the exclusion of the Russian and Belarusian delegations after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A record 138 women Para athletes are competing.
In Russia, the state-run news agency Tass has reported that the country’s ministry of sport is planning an alternative Winter Paralympics event featuring the expelled Russian and Belarusian athletes, to be held in the venues that hosted the Games in Sochi in 2014. The Russian state channel Match TV has declined to broadcast the Beijing Games saying: “We express solidarity with our athletes – live broadcasting of the Paralympic Games has been cancelled.”
The International Paralympic Committee president, Andrew Parsons, made headlines with his passionate anti-war speech at the opening ceremony on Friday, but not, according to reports, in China. The live broadcast on Chinese state TV is reported to have not translated Parsons’s condemnation of war, and then lowered the volume of his remarks in English for a while.
There were mixed fortunes for the British wheelchair curling team, with the opening ceremony flagbearers, Gregor Ewan and Meggan Dawson-Farrell, included among the four. After losing a tight opening match 7-5 to Norway they rallied to win their second match 10-6 against the US. The British team now have a day off before facing Switzerland and Slovakia in the round robin stage on Mondaytomorrow.
