Faye Rogers swam to victory in the Paralympic swimming competition in Paris and finally she became the Olympic hopeful to the Paralympic swimming champion within three years after a car accident that happened with her.
The 21-year-old outcompeted her fellow ParalympicsGB swimmer Callie-Ann Warrington to clinch the S10 100m fly title in British style in La Défense Arena.
Rogers qualified for the Tokyo Olympic selection trials in 2021 when she was struck by a car and badly broke her right arm in September 2021 while driving to a training session. On the same day she was meant to move to Aberdeen University.
After her elbow joint dislocation, several open fractures of lower limbs, and a severed right ulnar nerve, the doctors said that she could no longer compete in swimming.
“It has been the most exciting time the past three years,” Rogers said. That’s been one of the biggest experiences. I couldn’t be proud of how far I have come and how I got here. It was very, very hard to be told ‘you will never swim competitively again’ because not swimming competitively was all my life.
“I’ve only been paraswimming for a short time and I’ve never looked back. Swimming has been a Savior for me. I don’t think I would have been able to cope with the accident and my impairment if it wasn’t for swimming. It means the world to me.”
The world champion Rogers was fastest ahead of Warrington by 1.31 seconds in the heats but was behind her compatriot in the middle of Tuesday evening’s final. The biochemistry student, from Stockton-on-Tees, fought hard to ‘feel the touch of the wall’, completing the race in 1 minute and 5.84 seconds—winning the title by only 0.57 seconds. “By the end , I could see Callie next to me,” she said. “I did get a little anxious just before the race but other than that, I felt quite confident Callie was a great competitor in that second 50 [meters]. She really spurred me on a lot more. Could not be happier as things panned out. ”
The Maidstone-born Warrington was able to set his fastest time at 1 min 6.41 seconds as she fought to repel the onslaught of the Canadian bronze medalist, Katie Cosgriffe.
“It is everything to be able to race against Faye,” the young and talented 24-year-old person remarked.
“We have been saying to each other the last couple of months, “Let’s go for the one-two.” Would it not be great if she was on my side?
Sammi Kinghorn celebrates her second silver
It was a day to remember for the wheelchair racer Sammi Kinghorn, who bagged her second silver of the games in the women’s T54 1500m. The 28-year-old Scot recorded 3 minutes and 16.1 seconds at the Stade de France, 2.91 seconds behind the Paralympic record held by the Swiss gold medalist Catherine Debrunner. Somal came to GB’s first athletics medal of the Games when he finished second in the T53 800m on Sunday.
“It was shocking to think the sprinter would get a medal over 1500m; I did not see it coming,” she said. If I were given such an opportunity, I thought I would be fighting for the fourth position, let alone struggling to get the third position.
“It was all pretty exciting. I got a bit disoriented, and I stopped at 200 m to go because I thought we were done. There’s nothing like this back home and I found it a bit overwhelming, such a fantastic atmosphere… So I learned that I need to count laps. But that noise? That was absolutely electric, and I am absolutely buzzing to be coming home with this.”
The team from Great Britain’s men was 84-64 past Australia to set a wheelchair basketball semi-final meeting with Germany.
Tokyo bronze medalists’ Ben Fox scored 26 points in collecting his team’s points in the quarterfinal played at Bercy Arena, with Gregg Warburton and Lee Manning scoring 22 and 21 points, respectively. In their first match of the group, Britain also played against Germany, whom they are going to face on Thursday and won the match 76-55.
Fox said: “There is a lot to erase from that first game; we could remember the positive aspects but really , it’s a new game. We will prepare for a real fight. ”
England’s last appearance in a final was in 1996 at Atlanta and the British team succumbed to the Australians. At times, it is so easy to forget, but thank goodness, Fox never did and he said, “It is about time we got ourselves back there.”
“It is always great to know that there is a lot of history within GB wheelchair basketball and we have to pay back the people who laid the way before us.”
One of the late-night winners was the British wheelchair fencer, Piers Gilliver, who lost in the final of the men’s category A sabre. Gilliver, who holds the title epee A, was defeated 15/8 by winner of the day Maurice Schmidt from Germany at the Grand Palais. The 29-year-old emerged winner over the Italian Matteo Dei Rossi 15-8 and Ukraine’s Artem Manko 15-14 to qualify him for the gold medal match for the first official fencing competition in France.
At the same time, after the post-race disqualification, the Australian racer Zac Shaw won the bronze in the men’s T12 100m race. The British sprinter battled to fourth position in the race on Saturday evening, finishing the race with a timing of 10.94sec. Serkan Yildirim of Turkey had been first awarded the third place on the podium.
