Ronan Grimes set a new personal best twice in the individual pursuit at the Paralympic Games; racing into the bronze medal ride-off.
However, when the Irish rider went head-to-head with Diego
German Duenas for the bronze, the Colombian beat him to the medal, though
Grimes led in the early stages of their race.
Richael Timothy was also back in action again today for
Ireland and set a new personal best in the C1-C3 500m time trial, on her way to
10th place.
Grimes clocked a new PB of 4:37.696 in qualifying and then went event faster in the bronze medal ride-off, with 4:37.001, compared to his Colombian rival’s 4:35.607.
The Paralympic title was won by Jozef Metelka of Slovakia
with a new world record time of 4:22.772.
“There’s not much more I could have done there. He never drops off – he always maintains the pace,” Grimes said of Colombian German Duenas.
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Grimes continued: “We were looking at the splits from this morning. He started very slow in that race. We were calculating that if it was like that qualifier I could have had four seconds on him by two kilometres.
“The plan was to go out hard and hopefully he would go
out slow and then I might catch a bit of a draft off him. I knew that he
would drive on at the end.
“If he started slightly slower there might be a bit of a slipstream there and it would keep me for him for just a bit longer and then whatever kick he had at the end I might have had a buffer. It was the last two laps when he pulled away from me.”
In Rachel Timothy’s 500m TT event, Amanda Reid of
Australia won gold in 35.581. Alyda Norbuis of the Netherlands won silver in 36.057
while China’s Wangwei Qian took bronze in 38.070, in a race where the three
medal winners all broke the world record.
“This is not a target event for me but it is another race
under my belt. I did a PB, I couldn’t have gone any faster,” Timothy said after
her race.
“It is nice to get that over with and I can focus
on the road now. It is nice to get a focus on the road race and I am looking
forward to that. I get a run out in the time trial first and that will give me
a good idea of the course and what to expect for the road race.
“We’re heading straight over to the road venue now to get
familiarised with it and put the track behind us until next year. It is
fairly twisty and rolling – I’m looking forward to getting out on it.”
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