Simply seconds clear of what will have been the most important second of her younger profession, Ottawa’s Bianca Borgella suffered a heartbreaking harm on Tuesday within the girls’s T13 100m ultimate on the 2024 Paralympic Video games. Borgella was once one of the most favourites to win a medal for Canada at those Video games.
Only a terrible scene right here at Stade de France as 🇨🇦 Bianca Borgella is going down with an harm in her 100m Paralympic ultimate debut.
She were given again up and crossed the road. However has now been taken off the observe in a wheelchair.
I’ll paintings to get main points on her well being. percent.twitter.com/RgBOENj3qW
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) September 3, 2024
Borgella in the past received bronze on this match on the 2023 Global Para Athletics Championships and entered her first Paralympic Video games with top hopes. On the other hand, on the 50-metre mark, she pulled up with a hamstring harm and collapsed onto the observe. Regardless of the ache, Borgella controlled to get again on her toes and end the race, crossing the road in 25.11 seconds whilst clutching the again of her leg, then limping off the observe on the Stade de France.
The race was once received by way of Azerbaijan’s Lamiya Valiyeva, who set a girls’s T13 global checklist with a time of eleven.76 seconds. Brazil’s Rayane Soares da Silva took silver with a non-public very best of eleven.78 seconds, whilst Irish sprinter Orla Comerford rounded out the rostrum with a bronze in 11.94 seconds.
Athletics Canada has but to show the severity of Borgella’s harm, however she faces a handy guide a rough turnaround, as she is slated to compete in spherical one of the most girls’s T13 200m on Friday morning.
🇨🇦Bianca Borgella pulled up with an harm in her Paralympic 100m ultimate debut. Fell all the way down to the observe.
After which she pulled herself again up. And completed the race. It was once fairly one thing right here.
She’s beneath excellent care with Group Canada’s clinical physician and is being assessed. percent.twitter.com/EoOf6vDQr3
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) September 3, 2024
The 21-year-old most effective started her observe and box adventure 3 years in the past, when a trainer spotted her velocity at a summer time sports activities camp for the blind. Borgella arrived in Paris with ambitions of successful two medals for Canada within the T13 100m and 200m occasions.
Borgella’s harm was once certainly one of a number of tricky moments for Canadian para-athletes on the Stade de France on Tuesday night. Toronto’s Marissa Papaconstantinou, who medaled at Tokyo 2020, completed fourth within the girls’s T64 100m, and males’s T38 400m athlete Zachary Gingras of Markham, Ont., positioned 5th, lacking the rostrum in a global record-setting race.
Up to now, Group Canada has received 3 medals in para athletics on the 2024 Paralympic Video games: one gold, one silver and a bronze.