03 September 2012

Britain won their fifth gold athletics medal of the Paralympics when Mickey Bushell (Fred Periac) dominated the T53 100m. Drawn in lane 5, he soon had a gap on the rest of the field and the gap grew as did the cheers throughout and he won by around three metres in a Paralympic record 14.75 as China took the other medals.

Bushell said, “The 100m is my main event, my strongest event and the one I wanted to win most. Conditions were perfect and it went better than I hoped. I think I got out second but after the first push I started to pull away and I was confident I could win.Gold was the only thing I wanted, it’s been a long, hard four years to get here. Last night I watched Dave Weir and I was bouncing off the walls; Dave has been massive for me as a team mate; he’s a fantastic guy and a great role model.

Other than the gold medal race, it was a very quiet evening with just two other Britons taking part.
Forty nine year-old newcomer Steve Osborne (Peter Eriksson) finished fifth in the T51 100m in 23.40, only 0.41 of a second away from bronze.

“I enjoyed it, I really did – I want some more. I want to keep going through to Rio. I’ve only been doing this a year and I think that this has come a bit early, but I enjoyed it.”

Dean Miller (Bud Baldaro) ran bravely in the T37 1500m and was in a medal position for much of the race but just faded on the last lap to finish seventh in 4:21.57 which was less than a second outside his lifetime PB.

He said, “round the back end, I just don’t think I was going quick enough and I didn’t have it when the other guys kicked past. I tried to battle, and tried to get someone on the line but I think I just missed him. It’s just one of those days, it didn’t go to plan. I’ll be back for Rio though. The crowd were just incredible. It was so surreal. I kept hearing people say ‘go on Dean’, and I took a little look a couple of times and it was people I didn’t know! It was a great experience, I’ll definitely be back for more. The Paraympic games is amazing. I missed out four years ago with a stress fracture wheni was 18 and I thought it was the end of the world. So now to get here it’s a dream.”