Both Canada and hosts China enjoyed double gold celebrations at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre as day five of the 2022 Winter Paralympics saw six gold medals decided in the cross-country sprinting.
Brian McKeever held off Jake Adicoff of the US to win the men’s sprint free visually impaired category by 0.8 seconds, but the closeness of the time doesn’t convey the ease with which the Canadian had slowed up and still claimed his 15th career Winter Paralympics gold medal. McKeever began losing his sight age 19 due to Stargardt disease and plans to retire from competition after these Games.
Natalie Wilkie of Canada also struck gold, winning the women’s standing free final by three seconds, adding a second gold after she won the long-distance cross-country event on Monday. The two golds for Canada have moved the country up into second place in the medal table, with seven golds, two silver and seven bronze medals in total.
British athletes Callum Deboys, Hope Gordon and Steve Thomas all failed to qualify for the later stages of Wednesday’s events, but Deboys, who finished 22nd in the men’s sitting qualification said: “For me and where I am that’s as good a result as I can get just now. I’m over the moon. I’m just trying to soak everything up and enjoy myself and get as much experience as I can with a view to the next Games.”
Gordon was 17th in the women’s sitting event as she became the first female Para Nordic skier for ParalympicsGB, and is looking forward to racing again on Saturday. “I’ve got 7.5km on Saturday, never done one of them before, so not really got a huge amount of expectations, once again just try and get round it, it’s 7,300 metres longer than I’m used to racing,” she said.
This is only the sixth time a Chinese team has appeared at the Winter Paralympics, and in their previous five appearances they had just one gold – in wheelchair curling in 2018 – to show for it. That has all changed in Beijing, where they now have 31 medals in total, including two golds from Wednesday’s cross-country skiing.
In the men’s sprint sitting, Zheng Peng finished ahead of compatriot Mao Zhongwu to make it a gold-silver double for the hosts. Then in the women’s race, Yang Hongqiong took gold, just managing to hold off a late surge from Ukrainian-born US para athlete Oksana Masters, who claimed her third silver of these Games to go with the gold she won on Saturday.
In the cross-country sprint, athletes set off at time intervals determined by their relative levels of impairment, so in the standing event, for example, athletes with upper limbs impairments who cannot use poles lead off the race, with those who can use one pole starting in a second group, and those who can use two poles starting last. The staggered start guarantees the races usually conclude with a bunched finish and only seconds separating athletes with widely differing levels of impairments.
The remaining medals of the day went to Benjamin Daviet of France, who won the men’s standing event. The 32-year-old previously earned three medals, including two golds, in Pyeongchang in para biathlon. Carina Edlinger of Austria won the visually impaired category for women, followed by Oksana Shyskova of Ukraine in silver.
The British wheelchair curling team endured a dispiriting day at the “Ice Cube” in Beijing. A 6-3 defeat to Canada and an 8-6 loss to South Korea make it impossible for the team to progress to the semi-finals even if they were to win their two remaining fixtures. Of more immediate concern was an injury to team member David Melrose, who was carried off following a heavy fall from his wheelchair in the match against Sweden. His chair appeared to get jammed on one of the buffers at the side of the ice, and ParalympicsGB confirmed that a hospital scan later revealed Melrose had suffered a rotator cuff injury.
South Korea will face Canada in the first para ice hockey semi-final on Friday after easing through the play-offs with a 4-0 defeat of Italy. The other semi-final will feature China against reigning champions the US. The hosts defeated the Czech Republic 4-3 in a rollercoaster play-off match to book their spot. While the sport is nominally mixed, China’s squad features Yu Jing, only the third woman to ever make a roster at the Winter Paralympics.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee has revealed that Anastasiia Laletina pulled out of the middle-distance sitting event in the cross-country skiing on Tuesday after receiving news that her father – a soldier in the Ukrainian army – had been captured by Russian forces. The spokesperson said 19-year-old Laletina was still in Zhangjiakou and will fly to Poland with the rest of the team when the Games end.
