ParalympicsGB roundup: Rogers seals swimming gold after crash horror

Faye Rogers completed the journey from Olympic hopeful to Paralympic swimming champion by powering to gold in Paris three years since the car crash which changed her life.
The 21-year-old edged out her ParalympicsGB teammate Callie-Ann Warrington to scoop the S10 100m butterfly crown in a British one-two at La Défense Arena.
Rogers took part in Olympic selection trials for Tokyo in 2021 before seriously injuring her right arm in September of that year while driving to training on the day she was due to move to Aberdeen University.
Having sustained several open fractures, a dislocated elbow and a severed ulnar nerve, she was told by doctors that her competitive swimming career was over.
“It’s been an absolute whirlwind, the last three years,” Rogers said. “It’s been a massive journey. I couldn’t be prouder of where I’ve come from and how I’ve got here. Being told you’re never going to swim competitively again, as someone whose life revolved around swimming, that was really, really difficult.
“Getting into para-swimming has been amazing. It’s honestly been a lifesaver for me. I don’t think I’d have coped with the accident and my impairment without being able to swim. I couldn’t be more grateful.”
The world champion Rogers was fastest ahead of Warrington by 1.31sec in the heats but trailed her compatriot at the halfway point of Tuesday evening’sfinal. The biochemistry student, from ­Stockton-on-Tees, battled back to touch the wall in 1min 5.84sec – taking the title by just 0.57sec. “I could see Callie next to me,” she said. “I got a bit nervous but I was relatively confident. Callie put up a really good fight down that second 50 [metres], pushed me on a lot. I couldn’t be more happy with the outcome.”
The Maidstone-born Warrington clocked a personal best of 1min 6.41sec as she held off the challenge of the Canadian bronze medallist Katie Cosgriffe.
“To be able to race against Faye is just everything,” the 24-year-old said.
“We have been saying to each other the last couple of months: ‘Come on, we can get the one-two.’ It was lovely to have her next to me.”
It was a day to remember for the wheelchair racer Sammi Kinghorn, who secured her second silver of the Games in the women’s T54 1500m. The 28-year-old Scot clocked 3min 16.1sec at the Stade de France, 2.91sec slower than the Paralympic record set by the Swiss gold medallist Catherine Debrunner. Kinghorn claimed GB’s first athletics medal of the Games by finishing second in the T53 800m on Sunday.
“Who would have thought a sprinter would get a medal over 1500m? I certainly did not,” she said. “I thought I’d be jostling for fourth, maybe squeeze a third.
“It was all pretty exciting. I got a bit disorientated and I stopped at 200m to go because I thought we were done – it’s so loud in here which we’re not used to. So I learned I need to count laps. But that noise is absolutely electric and I’m absolutely buzzing to come away with a medal.”
Great Britain’s men booked a wheelchair basketball semi-final showdown against Germany with an 84-64 win against Australia.
Ben Fox topscored for the Tokyo bronze medallists by shooting 26 points in the quarter-final at Bercy Arena, while Gregg Warburton and Lee Manning chipped in with 22 and 21 respectively. Britain defeated Germany, whom they face on Thursday, 76-55 in their opening group match.
Fox said: “We have to forget a lot of that first game. We can remember the things that went well but it’s a new game. We’ll expect a real battle.”
Great Britain last reached the final at Atlanta in 1996, which ended in defeat against Australia. “It is about time we got ourselves back there,” Fox said.
“There is a lot of history within GB wheelchair basketball and we have to pay back the people who laid the way before us.”
The British wheelchair fencer Piers Gilliver won a late-night silver following defeat in the final of the men’s category A sabre. Gilliver, the reigning epee A champion, was beaten 15-8 by Germany’s Maurice Schmidt at Grand Palais. The 29‑year‑old overcame the Italian Matteo Dei Rossi 15-8 and Ukraine’s Artem Manko 15-14 to reach the gold-medal bout on the opening day of fencing action in France.
Meanwhile, following a retrospective disqualification, Zac Shaw was awarded the bronze medal in the men’s T12 100m. The British sprinter finished fourth in the race on Saturday evening in a time of 10.94sec. Serkan Yildirim, of Turkey, was initially awarded the final podium place.