It was an emotional end to his fourth Paralympic Games and perhaps his career for wheelchair fencer Pierre Mainville.
‘’These are my last Games,’’ said the 48-year-old from St-Colomban, Que., after completing the men’s epee event on Thursday. ‘’It’s kind of nostalgic. Usually my family is at the Paralympics and now they couldn’t come because of COVID. So I had a lot of emotion about that because I would have loved if my family had been here.’’
Mainville won one of his six matches on the day.
‘’Today the matches were all hard,’’ said Mainville. ‘’I had problems with my strength and my hands. I couldn’t do my match, my game.’’
In men’s epee in the A category, Ryan Rousell, at his first Games, lost his six matches in the preliminaries but two of them were by 5-4 scores.
‘’My two best ones were against China and Russia,’’ sad Rousell, who added he hopes this will be his first of many Paralympics. ‘’They are both very strong epeeists and very smart so with the calibre of fencing I’m very pleased.’’
Ruth Sylvie Morel competed in the women’s sabre event on Wednesday and is also scheduled for the women’s foil on Saturday. The 64-year-old is at her first Games since 2012 in London. In 2000, she was Canada’s first ever wheelchair fencer in Sydney.
Matthieu Hébert rounds out the Canadian squad. Like Morel his events are the sabre and foil.
