Bath based fencer wins gold at Tokyo Paralympics
Piers Giliver triumphed in the category A individual epee
Last updated 26th Aug 2021
Bath has gained its first medals of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
Piers Giliver has won the category A epee in the wheelchair fencing to add to a silver he got at Rio 2016.
He beat Maxim Shaburov from the Russian Paralympic Committee 15-9 at the Makuhari Messe convention centre.
He trains at the University of Bath and in a tweet, Team Bath offered him "huge congratulations".
His victory cam just after Dimitri Coutya, who also trains in Bath, won bronze in the category B epee.
"Gilliver bounced back from his early exit in Wednesday’s sabre competition to totally dominate the Category A epee event, winning all of his preliminary pool bouts and conceding just eight hits in the quarter- and semi-finals," a university press release reads.
His success marks the first wheelchair fencing title for ParalympicsGB since 1988.
Coutya narrowly missed out on a chance at gold in his event when he was beaten by Brazil’s Jovane Guissone 15-12, but he went on to beat Andrei Pranevich of Belarus 15-11 in the bronze-medal match.
Both are back in action on Friday when they compete in the men's epee team event alongside another Bath based wheelchair fencer Oliver Lam-Watson, who is making his Paralympics debut.