More great news for Get Kids Going! athletes as Andy Small won his first Paralympic title in the T33 100m. Great Britain now have 25 gold medals in the Paralympics. We were proud to fund the wheelchair that he won gold with. He narrowly beat defending champion, Ahmad Almutairi, of Kuwait by 0.1s with a time of 17.73s.
Andy was inspired by watching Get Kids Going!’s president David Weir at the London Marathon in 2012 and said “I was born in 1993, I weighed one pound, six ounces. I had a 5% chance of living. To get here is crazy.
“To watch London 2012, be inspired by David Weir and Hannah Cockroft, and then be in Rio four years later was a little bit strange.
“It’s the same with this, especially considering the Games weren’t supposed to happen. I’ve got to pinch myself sometimes.”
In 2016 Andy had some disappointment in the European Championships. Although he finished third behind Great Britain team mates Toby Gold and Dan Bramall, he was not awarded a bronze due to the number of entries in the race. However in the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Andy competed in the Men’s T33 100m and received a bronze medal and achieved a personal best time of 17.96 seconds.
“This is the combination of a lot of hard struggles and it means so much,” said Andy.
“I think back to all those cold evenings in the garage during the pandemic, training on the rollers on Zoom and not being able to hear anyone because of microphone troubles, this makes it worth it.
“It’s just wonderful to have five years’ worth of hard work pay off.”
Meanwhile, our President and 6 time Paralympic champion David Weir achieved 2:55.84 to qualify for the men’s 1500m T54 final. He will meet his long-time Swiss rival Marcel Hug on 31st August at 3.46am BST. They will be joined David’s team-mate Daniel Sidbury, who achieved a 2:56.26 personal best.
GB are currently second on the medal board, with only China ahead. We’re looking forward to cheering on our other Get Kids Going! athletes in the coming days.