From Bath University: Wheelchair fencers Dimitri Coutya, Piers Gilliver and Oliver Lam-Watson are returning from Paris to their Bath training base with 10 Paralympic medals between them following a week to remember in the Grand Palais.
The trio concluded the Games by winning bronze in the men’s team epee competition on Saturday, beating Poland 45-28 in the medal decider to back up the silver they had won in Thursday’s team foil event. That meant Coutya, Gilliver and Lam-Watson emulated the team results they had achieved three years ago in Tokyo.
Coutya – newly-crowned champion in both the individual Category B epee and foil – is coming home with two gold medals, one silver and one bronze; Gilliver – runner-up in the Category A epee and sabre – with three silver and one bronze; and Lam-Watson with one silver and one bronze.
That is one more than the nine medals they secured between them in Paris and means the trio have now won 20 medals at the past three Games, including the breakthrough epee silver that Gilliver claimed at Rio 2016.
The trio, who all train at the University of Bath in the Wheelchair Fencing National Training Centre, started their team epee competition with a comfortable 45-20 victory over host nation France before being edged out 45-39 by Iraq in a close-fought semi-final.
Para-badminton player Dan Bethell, who does his regional training at the Team Bath Sports Training Village, also won men’s SL3 singles silver in Paris, meaning there were 11 medals in total for Bath-based athletes at the Paralympic Games.
That added to the six medals won by Bath-associated athletes at the Olympic Games – gold in the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay gold for Aquatics GB Bath Performance Centre swimmers Tom Dean and Kieran Bird; silver in the artistic swimming duet for Bill Whiteley Sporting Scholar Kate Shortman; silver in the men’s 50m freestyle for University of Bath Swimming Club’s Ben Proud; silver in the women’s -63kg judo with Mexico for Sports Performance alumna Prisca Awiti-Alcaraz; and bronze in the women’s double scull for Crew Bath rower Becky Wilde.
There are now just over 500 days to go until the next major global competition, the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games where athletes with the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association will be seeking more medals. They are based at the University of Bath, one of just eight UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centres in the country.