Brilliant bronze in team epee provides fitting medal-winning climax to week to remember for wheelchair fencers in Paris
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 medal 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 Tokyo 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.
Picture credit: imagecomms
