Flurina Rigling wins her second Paralympics medal. In the road race, the Zurich native takes 2nd place in the sprint.
At the end it was all haywire. The first men had just crossed the finish line and the French jubilation over silver and bronze had barely died down before the fastest women roared past. Right in the middle of the top 4 sprint: Flurina Rigling. The 27-year-old was able to leave the American Clara Brown and the Swede Anna Beck behind and was only narrowly beaten by the Japanese Keiko Sugiura.
Strong climbs from Rigling
There were six riders who distanced themselves from the rest of the competition early on. They then rode a race on their own, in which the pace was not too high because no one really wanted to do any leading work on a regular basis. Thanks to her strength on the climbs, Rigling always managed to catch up - until the final explosion.
"It was a fight for survival," Rigling analyzed, "technically I was the weakest. I can certainly still improve a lot there, but it's also challenging for me in terms of the starting position. But I'm physically strong, so I was able to compensate in such a way that it worked out. That makes me extremely proud."
Flurina Rigling managed to keep the tension high for the entire duration of the Paralympics. On the first day of competition, she kicked off the Swiss medal round with bronze in the 3000 m pursuit, and on Saturday she won Swiss medal number 18. In between, she missed out on the bronze medal in the time trial by a tiny three tenths. Her Paralympics summary is positive: "I'm very satisfied. Luck was also on my side today. A few days ago it was on the other side. This is an extremely conciliatory finish."
Sixth medal at major events this year
Rigling has thus added another chapter of success to a personally very strong year. Her medal tally at the 2024 World Championships and Paralympics combined: 6 medals in 8 individual starts. "I'm extremely proud, especially because of the consistency. It's very challenging to perform over such a long period of time, from January with the World Cup in Australia to now and there's still the World Championships to come."
Her thanks go above all to those around her and she is already looking ahead: "Now I have another four years and everyone wants to keep going."
SDA
