Team GB at the 2024 Paralympics - Part 1

[mpjmcevoy 375]

12 hours ago, Grassmarket said:

 girl was holding back, so Silver & our first medal.

 

Sadly Kadeena Cox had a disaster of a start and ruled rider error, so no medal chance.

She was visibly shaking in the gate, and I don't think it was nerves. She had a very serious MS relapse this year on top of her other injuries, and this looked connected, like the pretty strong morning effort took too much out of her ability to control her symptoms - particularly the way she had to be helped off the track - it didn't look like a collision injury, it looked like she was ill, unsteady.

 

Kadeena used to get grief from the 'are you really disabled?" mob, because she is clearly such a strong natural athlete. Today was a sad but very useful reminder of the battles Kadeena actually faces, as do so many other paraathletes, and which they so oten seem to conquer - one can forget a fair part of their lives is not conquering, but surviving, and that's heroic too. And it puts in perspective the extraordinary success of the Neilsen twins.

 

Pretty sure Groot would have preferred to face a fit Kadeena (and a firing on all cylinders Murray for that matter) - given the longevity of para careers, I'm pretty hopeful she'll get that chance in LA. Hopefully the track program will expand a little too, as the Worlds showed you can absolutely do scratch, points, sprint and omniu style events with para riders (tandem match sprint is arguably more exciting than Olympic match sprint because the co-orination of effort is so extraordinary)