Mickey Bushell adds to GB gold medals with his 100m win

London 2012 Paralympian Mickey Bushell takes first place in the T53 100m sprint...

16:46 04 September 2012

Wheelchair competitor Mickey Bushell, 22, gains glory at the Olympic Stadium with a time of 14.75 seconds, just ahead of second place winner Zhao Yufei, of China.

 

Bushell, who was born without seven vertebrae in his back, upgraded his silver medal at Beijing by taking first place in London.

 

“Gold is the only thing I wanted,” he told The Telegraph. “I know I had to work for it. It’s been a long hard four years.”

 

The athlete from Shropshire shared his emotional victory with former Canadian wheelchair competitor Chantal Petitclerc, who has worked with the British wheelchair athletes, according to The Telegraph.

 

“I was crying,” she said. “We’ve spent the last two weeks together and you get attached to these boys and you want them to do well. He was brilliant, really brilliant.

 

“He wanted to race fast and he did a Paralympic record on a track that is not so fast for wheelchair racers and with no strong tailwind, so that’s a really fast time for this track.”

 

Team GB's track and field Paralympians took only two gold medals from Beijing, which was a disappointing result as they were expected to perform better at the 2008 Games.

 

By Day Five GB were second in the medal table with a total of 63 medals, including 19 golds, with China in the lead having a whopping 112 medals.

 

By late Monday Russia had taken third place ahead of Australia giving them a total of 49 medals.