Faye Rogers completed the journey from Olympic hopeful to Paralympic swimming champion by powering to gold in Paris three years on from the car crash which changed her life.
The 21-year-old edged out ParalympicsGB teammate Callie-Ann Warrington to scoop the S10 100m butterfly crown in a British one-two at La Defense Arena.
Rogers took part in Olympic selection trials for Tokyo in 2021 before seriously injuring her right arm in September of that year while driving to training on the day she was due to move to Aberdeen University.
Having suffered several open fractures, a dislocated elbow and a severed ulna nerve, doctors said her competitive swimming career was over. “It’s been an absolute whirlwind, the last three years,” said Rogers. “It’s been a massive journey. I couldn’t be prouder of where I’ve come from and how I’ve got here.
“Being told you’re never going to swim competitively again, as someone whose life revolved around swimming, that was really, really difficult. Getting into Para swimming has been amazing. It’s honestly been a lifesaver for me.
“I don’t think I’d have coped with the accident and my impairment without being able to swim. I couldn’t be more grateful.”
World champion Rogers was fastest ahead of Warrington by 1.31 seconds in the heats but trailed her compatriot at the halfway point of Tuesday evening’s final.
The biochemistry student, from Stockton-on-Tees, battled back to touch the wall in one minute 5.84 secs – taking the title by just 0.57 secs. “I could see Callie next to me,” she said “I got a bit nervous but I was relatively confident. Callie put up a really good fight down that second 50 (metres), pushed me on a lot. I couldn’t be more happy with the outcome.”
Maidstone-born Warrington clocked a personal best of one minute 6.41 secs as she held off the challenge of the Canadian bronze medallist Katie Cosgriffe.
“To be able to race against Faye is just everything,” said the 24-year-old. “We have been saying to each other the last couple of months: ‘come on, we can get the one-two’. It was lovely to have her next to me.”
It was a day to remember for the wheelchair racer Sammi Kinghorn who secured her second silver of the Paris Paralympics in the women’s T54 1500 metres.
The 28-year-old Scot clocked three minutes and 16.1 seconds at Stade de France, 2.91 seconds slower than the new Paralympic record set by the Swiss gold medallist Catherine Debrunner. Kinghorn previously claimed Great Britain’s first athletics medal of the Games by finishing second in the T53 800m on Sunday.
She said: “Who would have thought a sprinter would get a medal over 1500m? I certainly did not. I thought I’d be jostling for fourth, maybe squeeze a third.
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“It was all pretty exciting. I kinda got a bit disorientated and I stopped at 200 metres to go because I thought we were done – it’s so loud in here which we’re not used to. So I learned I need to count laps. But that noise is absolutely electric and I’m absolutely buzzing to come away with a medal.”
Great Britain’s men booked a wheelchair basketball semi-final showdown against Germany with a thumping 84-64 win over Australia.
Ben Fox top scored for the Tokyo bronze medallists by shooting 26 points in the quarter-final at Bercy Arena, while Gregg Warburton and Lee Manning chipped in with 22 and 21 respectively. Britain defeated Germany, whom they face on Thursday, 76-55 in their opening group match in France.
Fox said: “We have to forget a lot of that first game. We can remember the things that went well but it’s a new game. We’ll expect a real battle.”
GB last reached the final at Atlanta in 1996, which ended in defeat to Australia. “It is about time we got ourselves back there,” said Fox. “There is a lot of history within GB wheelchair basketball and we have to pay back the people who laid the way before us.”
