Tokyo (RWH) Two bobsleigh athletes finished their Tokyo Paralympic Games competitions with a medal around their necks.
Kate O‘Brien from Canada won silver in the C4-5 500-metre track cycling time trial at her Games debut. The 33-year-old competed as bobsleigh push athlete between 2010 and 2015, including nine World Cup races and a team bronze medal at the 2015 World Championships pushing two-times Olympic Champion Kaillie Humphries. Kate O’Brien, who always switched between the Canadian national teams in bobsleigh and track cycling, survived a life-threatening bike crash at track in Calgary in 2017 with major head injuries. Despite being told that she might never walk let alone cycle again, she fought back onto the bike, to two para cycling World Championships titles and now a Paralympics medal.
Australian Evan O’Hanlon, Tokyo bronze medallist at the 100 meter sprint in the T38 category (cerebral palsy), already won five Paralympic gold medals. The 32-year-old is the first Paralympic Champion who managed to qualify for the BMW IBSF World Championships. In Altenberg 2021, O’Hanlon finished the 2-man Bobsleigh race in 24th place with push athlete Joseph Williamson (replaced in heat three by Dylan Sorensen due to injury). At the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, he became the Paralympic Champion over 100 and 200 metres and in the sprint relay. At London 2012, he once again won gold in the 100 and 200 metres, before securing another silver in the T38 100-metre event at Rio 2016. He has also won eight World Championship titles in various sprint and relay events. After competing in his fourth Paralympics at Tokyo 2021, Evan O’Hanlon is aiming to qualify for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games – which would make him the first Paralympic athlete to compete in another Olympic discipline and also appear at both the summer and winter games.
