Winter Paralympics: golds for Canada but GB curlers suffer injury and defeat

Both Canada and hosts China enjoyed double gold celebrations at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre as day five of the 2022 Winter Paralympics saw six gold medals decided in the cross-country sprinting.

Brian McKeever held off Jake Adicoff of the US to win the men’s sprint free visually impaired category by 0.8 seconds, but the closeness of the time doesn’t convey the ease with which the Canadian had slowed up and still claimed his 15th career Winter Paralympics gold medal. McKeever began losing his sight age 19 due to Stargardt disease and plans to retire from competition after these Games.

Natalie Wilkie of Canada also struck gold, winning the women’s standing free final by three seconds, adding a second gold after she won the long-distance cross-country event on Monday. The two golds for Canada have moved the country up into second place in the medal table, with seven golds, two silver and seven bronze medals in total.

British athletes Callum Deboys, Hope Gordon and Steve Thomas all failed to qualify for the later stages of Wednesday’s events, but Deboys, who finished 22nd in the men’s sitting qualification said: “For me and where I am that’s as good a result as I can get just now. I’m over the moon. I’m just trying to soak everything up and enjoy myself and get as much experience as I can with a view to the next Games.”

Gordon was 17th in the women’s sitting event as she became the first female Para Nordic skier for ParalympicsGB, and is looking forward to racing again on Saturday. “I’ve got 7.5km on Saturday, never done one of them before, so not really got a huge amount of expectations, once again just try and get round it, it’s 7,300 metres longer than I’m used to racing,” she said.

This is only the sixth