In the handbike class H4, the Styrian Thomas Frühwirth won his fourth Paralympic silver medal. The 43-year-old was denied his first gold by the Dutchman Jetze Plat after 28.3 km and a good 41 minutes by just 2.71 seconds. The previous ÖPC medals in Paris had been won by javelin thrower Natalja Eder and triathlete Florian Brungraber with bronze and silver.
Brungraber had already only been beaten by Plat in the triathlon, and not for the first time. Frühwirth paced his race excellently. At the 5.8 km intermediate time he was a good 12 seconds behind the winner, halfway through the race more than 18 seconds, from then on he was second and gradually caught up. But it was no longer possible to catch up with the “Oranje”. The 42-year-old Tyrolean Alexander Gritsch, after two bronze medals at the 2021 Games in Tokyo, came away empty-handed this time in eighth place. He was around 3:20 minutes behind third place.
Next chance in the road race
Veteran Frühwirth had invested everything in his preparations to win his first Paralympic title. He had put the finishing touches to his skills in a four-week high-altitude training camp immediately before the Games. He had described the course with flat sections and technical descents as a “Hollywood course” on which he should be able to make the most of his strengths. Like Gritsch, he will have another chance to do so on Thursday in the road race scheduled for 4 p.m. His compatriots Svetlana Moshkovich and Cornelia Wibmer will also be in action.
After two track events and fourth place in the pursuit, Franz-Josef Lässer again failed to win a medal, but he did well in fifth place in the C5 class. After 28.3 km, he was just under 27 seconds behind the third-placed athlete. Wolfgang Steinbichler came sixth in the T2 class, a good one and a half minutes behind bronze. 41-year-old Moshkovich, who won bronze as a Russian in London in 2012, came eighth in the H4 category, a good two minutes short of a medal after 14.1 km. Wibmer came 13th.
Swimmer Janina Falk also took part in the event, and the 21-year-old finished tenth in the 200 m individual medley in 2:37.70 minutes, just 2.72 seconds away from the final. Shooter Josef Pacher finished 20th in the 50 m rifle event in the SH2 category with 615.5 points.
