Piers Gilliver takes the first GBR Paralympic fencing medal of Paris 2024 – in his second weapon.
The first day of fencing competition at the 2024 Paralympic Games saw Piers Gilliver take a silver medal in Cat A Sabre with three British athletes in action at the Grand Palais.
The 29-year-old, who is defending a Paralympic title in epee later this week, had made significant improvements in sabre over the last cycle, winning the final World Cup competition in Poland.
In Paris, with a bye into the last eight, he took a win against Matteo dei Rossi of Italy to make the semis, where a superb last point against Ukrainian Artem Manko – who had beaten Gilliver to gold in the world championships last year – got him over the line and into the final, 15-14. Gilliver had come back from 8-4 down to get to the sudden death against Manko.
On 3rd September, a day beset by lengthy delays to competition, Gilliver eventually took the stage at for the gold medal match at 11pm in Paris. He started solidly against the German Maurice Schmidt – the only German competitor in the competition – with both trading points until the score was 8-8. But Schmidt’s incredible speed combined with excellent decisions saw him gather momentum and streak away to win 15-8.
While the result was not a huge shock, as the German had been making regularly making the sabre podium on the circuit in the last few years, it was hard to lose the gold. A frustrated Piers told the press: “I think for me once the Games come to a close, you can really look back and be proud. Having a medal is a big deal and I never thought I’d get to this position in my life. I think at the moment, to be honest I’m really gutted. But in time, I think I’m going to be proud of this.”
None of the GBR team are sabre specialists, but Dimitri Coutya and Gemma Collis also competed in Cat B and Cat A sabre respectively. Coutya narrowly lost to Adrian Castro of Poland in the last eight, 15-13, while Gemma lost to nataliia Morkvych of Ukraine, 15-7.
Both made it through to the third of four repechage rounds but they were defeated by Dmytro Serozhenko of Ukraine and Brianna Vide of France respectively.
“Today was full of frustrations.” said Coutya. “But in all honesty, I’m quite proud of the way I fenced. I delivered a lot of a very consistent performance, , especially considering the amount that I train in this weapon, which is the least out of the three. Tomorrow is my personal favourite event, the individual foil, and then onwards with a couple more team events. Today is about getting analysing the day, getting rid of the frustrations of the day and coming back fresh and ready for tomorrow.”
Collis said: “I’d say [today] probably a six out of 10. There were times when I executed really well, and bits I could be proud of that were really positive.”
“In Tokyo I was so worried about losing I didn’t really fence. I can be proud of a lot, but ultimately I really feel like that last fight was winnable, and I should have done a lot better.”
“But I really enjoyed myself and I think I’ve got so much I can take forward into my better event next week.”
The competition continues with the individual foil competition on Wednesday.
Pics via imagecomms / Paralympics GB and IWAS
The full competition schedule and results is available here: Wheelchair Fencing Schedule
Read BF’s guide to fencing at the Paralympics: Paralympics Guide
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