Menna Fitzpatrick and Neil Simpson added two more medals to ParalympicsGB’s tally with both winning bronze medals at the Super Combined Visually Impaired skiing competition, at the Yanqing National Alpine Centre.
ParalympicsGB have now won five medals at the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Games after just three days of competition.
Menna Fitzpatrick (23), who has now won six medals for ParalympicsGB across two Games, was skiing with guide Gary Smith and managed the quickest factored time in the slalom event to move into the medal positions folllowing a solid Super G run earlier. The combined time of 2:05.98 was just behind China’s Zhu Daqing and Slovakian great, Henrieta Farkasova.
Fitzpatrick, from Macclesfield, said: “Every medal is special in it’s own right; I absolutely love being a Paralympian and being able to ski and show people anybody can do it – if I inspire just one person, then I feel my job is done.
We left ourselves a bit of work to do in slalom and the plan paid off: going out there and putting down a pretty decent run, so we are super, super happy.
The confidence is really, really high – it was quite a tricky slalom set actually, with tight turns and lots of combinations. It was tough but really good fun to smash it in the slalom.”
Gary Smith, added “I love slalom. It’s hard for the guide but it is great fun and what a hill to ski down – this is 10 days I will not forget, that’s for sure.”
Millie Knight and guide Brett Wild, who won a bronze medal on the opening day of competition, narrowly missed out on a medal finishing in fourth place with a time of 2:07.89.
Fresh from their gold medal success in the Super G yesterday, brothers Neil and Andrew Simpson from Banchory Scotland, followed the same approach as Menna, lying outside the medal positions after a mistake in the Super G they moved them up the standings with a slick Slalom run for a combined time of 1:52.81 with Italy’s Giacomo Bertagnolli claiming gold.
A delighted Neil Simpson said: “I think with the mistake in the first run coming into the slalom, we knew we had to charge, and we had nothing to lose going in to the second run.
I was so tired after the gold medal yesterday I just had some food and went to bed so we were in the right mindset today.”
Andrew Simpson said ” We are still really, really happy with the Super G, we just had one mistake. We knew we were still close with the time and we got fired up and attacked the slalom.”
Image courtesy: ParalympicsGB