Winter Paralympics 2022: GB win first medal as Ukraine soar on day one

Great Britain have opened their campaign at the Winter Paralympics with a bronze for Millie Knight and her guide Brett Wild in the very first medal event in Beijing. Knight finished third in the visually impaired category of the women’s downhill Alpine skiing behind Henrieta Farkasova of Slovakia, who won the race to claim the 10th gold medal of her career.

After the race Knight said: “This bronze is something very special. It ranks above our silver four years ago in Pyeongchang. We have gone through some tough things and it has changed us. Crossing the line with a smile on my face was our No 1 goal. I feel like I’m on cloud nine and I just genuinely can’t believe that this is happening to us.”

Britain’s Menna Fitzpatrick finished fifth in the event, while the silver medal went to China’s Zhu Daqing, the first individual medal won at a Winter Paralympics by a Chinese athlete. The hosts made a strong start, with Liu Zixu and Guo Yujie then securing golds in biathlon events among eight Chinese medals in total.

The most emotional scenes of the day were at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre, where Grygorii Vovchynskyi took Ukraine’s first gold of the Games in the men’s sprint standing, and said “please, no war in Ukraine” to the camera at the end of his run. He was warmly congratulated by silver medallist Marco Maier of Germany, who finished just over 45 seconds behind. The German Paralympic committee described them as “medals for peace” in a tweet.

Vovchynskyi’s Ukrainian compatriots Liudmyla Liashenko and Taras Rad also picked up biathlon silver medals during the day’s session, which ended with another gold for the nation as Oksana Shyshkova emulated her teammate to win the women’s sprint for visually impaired