Britain enjoyed a golden morning in the Paralympic rowing, picking up three gold medals. Rachel Morris is a Paralympic champion in a second sport after claiming rowing gold in Rio yesterday, while Lauren Rowles and Laurence Whiteley also won the double sculls, before the mixed coxed fours completed the run of success, to make it 18 gold medals at the Games for ParalympicsGB.
The 37-year-old Morris, from Guildford in Surrey, won a road cycling time-trial gold in Beijing eight years ago. She was third in the road race on her hand bike at London 2012, six weeks after being hit by a car in training.
Four years on Morris won the women’s arms-only single sculls with a perfectly timed surge in the second half of the 1,000m race. Farnham’s Morris, who had both legs amputated because of complex regional pain syndrome, finished ahead of China’s Lili Wang, while Israel’s Moran Samuel took bronze.
She switched to rowing in 2013 and now has three Paralympic medals across two sports, adding to the hand-cycling time trial gold she won in Beijing in 2008 and bronze at London 2012.
Rowles and Whiteley then led from the start and held off China in the double sculls, before Pamela Relph won a second gold in the mixed coxed fours, having won the same event at London 2012. James Fox, Daniel Brown and Grace Clough, plus cox Oliver James, celebrated with her on a memorable day for British rowing.
Theirs was a fourth British medal from the morning at the regatta, after Tom Aggar had to settle for bronze in the men’s arms-only single sculls. Aggar won gold in Beijing and was unbeaten in four years until London 2012, where he was bitterly disappointed to finish fourth. He dug deep to return to the podium in Brazil.
Para-triathlete Steadman, who was born without a lower right arm, had been favourite to add Paralympic gold to her 2013 and 2014 world titles. But the 23-year-old former swimmer from Peterborough lost out to the USA’s Grace Norman by one minute and four seconds.
In the velodrome, London 2012 gold medallist Fachie, who has a congenital eye condition, and his pilot Pete Mitchell clocked a time of one minute 0.241 seconds to take silver, 0.419 seconds behind winner Tristan Bangma of the
Netherlands.