Rio 2016: Youth and experience for women’s wheelchair basketball team
The British Paralympic Association (BPA) today announced the 12 athletes who will compete on the women’s wheelchair basketball team at Rio 2016.
The line-up includes stalwarts of the team Clare Griffiths (nee Strange), who has competed at every Games since Sydney 2000 and Helen Freeman, who played wheelchair basketball on an athletic scholarship in the USA before returning to join the team’s centralised training programme at the University of Worcester to make her third Games appearance.
London 2012 competitors Jude Hamer, Amy Conroy and Laurie Williams also return to the fold for Rio.
They will be joined by teenager Katie Morrow, the youngest athlete on the team at just 16 years of age, as well as Robyn Love, who made a meteoric rise through the ranks to represent her country after discovering wheelchair basketball during London 2012.
Team veteran Clare Griffiths was a keen horsewoman before her accident and has been playing wheelchair basketball for almost 20 years. She commented on her selection today:
“Rio 2016 will be my fifth Paralympic Games but I never get tired of hearing the news that I have made a Paralympic team. I got really quite emotional when I found out I’d made the team, it is just so exciting."
