Winter Paralympics: Canada’s Brian McKeever wins record 16th career gold

Brian McKeever was already a Winter Paralympics legend for Canada, but he sealed it on Saturday morning with a third gold of these Beijing Games, his 16th career gold and 20th Paralympics medal overall. The 42-year-old skier won the men’s vision impaired middle distance cross-country race at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon centre. At his sixth Games, incredibly he now hasn’t lost an individual race at a Paralympics since 2006. That 16th gold puts him equal with Germany’s para alpine skier Gerd Schönfelder as the person with the most Paralympics golds.

On the slopes at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre it was another family celebration for Austria’s Aigner sisters, as Veronika Aigner took gold in the women’s visually impaired slalom, guided by her older sister Elisabeth. Younger sister Barbara Aigner took silver, ahead of Slovakian Alexandra Rexova. All of the medallists were teenagers.

Britain’s Menna Fitzpatrick, who was attempting to defend her title from Pyeongchang, finished fourth, a frustrating 0.45 seconds off the podium, a gap which afterwards she told Channel 4 “you can lose within a gate, within milliseconds”. She praised the Aigner sisters and said that the standard of competition had vastly increased over the last four years.

Teammate Millie Knight came eighth, and afterwards revealed that she had been carrying a foot injury throughout the Games. In good spirits she joked that “Slalom is something that I really struggle with, I’m really bad at it, but it was so much fun.”

There was a sad note though when her guide Brett Wilde announced that after six years and four Paralympic medals he was returning to Navy service and it would be the end of their partnership. “It’s been amazing,” he said. “I’ve