Willmer gets upgrade silver in para swimming
- Jul 28
- 2 min read
New Zealand para-swimmer Josh Willmer has claimed silver in the men's 100m breaststroke SB9 at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
Willmer won the event at Birmingham four years ago and qualified second fastest on this occasion, behind Canadian Fernando Lu.
LATEST HEADLINES:
In the final, where SB8 Willmer was racing against SB9 rivals, he was fourth through the 50 metres and rattled home to grab third at the finish in 1m 11.44s, a Games record for his class.
Aussie Beau Matthews, racing as an SB9, took gold in 1m 09.41s, but after finishing second, Lu was disqualified on a technicality, promoting the Kiwi to silver.
Willmer only learned his medal had been upgraded, when he was told by an official, as he was preparing to talk to media in the mixed zone.
"It's unreal, I had no idea," he said. "I'm pretty stoked.
"It's a bummer to the guy who got DQ'ed, but silver - what an upgrade!
"The race went perfectly to plan. It felt really good, it felt like I stuck to my race plan, and didn't speed up my strokes heaps and kept to the basics."
Willmer was forced to move up a classification for the Commonwealth Games to SB9, with the SB8 class not in the Games programme.
He said beating athletes in a higher classification was "mean".
"It's too good. I love racing against people that are better than me.
"I train in an able-bodied environment and I pretty much race against able-bodied breaststrokers."
New Zealand now has four silver and two bronze medals.
Meanwhile a top performance from Daniel Stoddart in the men's artistic gymnastics rings final finishing 7th in a tough field of competitors.
Courtney McGregor finished 5th in women's vault and at the pool Hazel Ouwehand placed 8th in the 100m Butterfly final
