SA team climb Paralympic table with two crucial bronze medals

The South African team raked in some crucial medals yesterday, edging their way up the table on day seven of the Paralympic Games in Paris.

In the morning, quadriplegic handcyclist Pieter du Preez claimed bronze in the men’s H1 time trial.

Du Preez, who won gold at the Tokyo Games three years ago, completed the 14.2km course in the French capital in 36:07.05 to grab third place.

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Fabrizio Cornegliani of Italy took the win, and the gold medal, in 34:50.45, and Maxime Hordies bagged silver in 35:11.13.

Du Preez earned Team SA’s third medal of the showpiece, which would have come as some relief for the struggling SA squad.

Wheelchair tennis medal

And the national team gained further momentum on the wheelchair tennis court yesterday afternoon, with Donald Ramphadi and Lucas Sithole digging deep in a tightly contested battle to secure bronze by winning their quad doubles playoff.

Ramphadi and Sithole, who are both former Grand Slam champions, combined well to clinch a 6-2 4-6 [10-8] victory over the Brazilian pairing of Leandro Pena and Ymanitu Silva.

Elsewhere yesterday, in the track and field competition, Mpumeleo Mhlongo fell narrowly short of his second medal at the Paris Games.

Mhlongo set a world record of 7.12m in the T44 classification, but he settled for fifth place in the T64 final, which was won by Markus Rehm of Germany with a leap of 8.13m.

Meanwhile, Kerwin Noemdo also fell just shy of adding to the national squad’s medal tally in the men’s F64 shot put final.

Noemdo was remarkably consistent, sending the shot well beyond 15 metres with all four of his legal attempts, but he settled for fifth position with a best throw of 15.63m in the opening round. Canadian athlete Greg Stewart won gold with a 16.38m heave.

Other sports

In the swimming pool, Christian Sadie set a new African record of 28.75 to finish seventh in the men’s S7 50m freestyle final, building on his impressive consistency at the Paris Games.

Equestrian rider Philippa Johnson-Dwyer, on Just In Time, took 14th position in the grade IV individual event with a score of 63.889.