Trinity Lowthian places fifth, Canada’s best ever wheelchair fencing result at the Paralympic Games

PARIS – Trinity Lowthian of Ottawa eliminated the second and third seeds to place an impressive fifth in the women’s epee Friday at her first Paralympic Games.

It is Canada’s best ever wheelchair fencing result at the Games. In 2012 Pierre Mainville reached the quarterfinals in men’s sabre and was ranked seventh.

The 22-year-old Lowthian, who started the sport in 2020, won two of her four matches in the single-day tournament. Those wins were against number-three seed Eun Hye Cho of South Korea 15-7 in the second repechage round and 15-13 over second seed Rossana Pasquino of Italy 15-13 in her next match.

Cho and Pasquino were the silver and bronze medallists at the world championships last year. Lowthian was 15^th.

Lowthian was just one win away from moving to the bronze medal match but lost her fourth round repechage 15-14 to Nga Ting Tong of Hong Kong.

‘’I’m so pleased with my performance,’’ said Lowthian diagnosed with autoimmune autonomic neuropathy when she was in high school. ‘’After my first match this morning (a 15-9 loss to Olena Fedota-Isaieva of Ukraine), I would have never imagined I would have made it this far and get those wins.’’

As the score indicates, the match against Tong was a nail biter. After Lowthian tied the match 14-14 the swordswomen duelled for two minutes before the winning point was finally scored.

‘’It was my first time fencing her in epee,’’ said Lowthian. ‘’We were figuring each other out and that took some time. Then I guess we both decided we were going to play a pretty defensive game. I don’t think I attacked once, I was just counter attacking her, which worked fairly well for me.’’

The highlight of the day was eliminating Cho and Pasquino, two of the biggest fishes in the sport.

‘’I threw Pasquino off her game at the start with the distance and she was pretty pissed,’’ Lowthian said. ‘’I just worked off of that. The last few points I could see her hand shaking and mine wasn’t. That just gave me a lot of extra confidence.’’

Her coach Paul ApSimon, who guided Eleanor Harvey to Canada’s best ever result at the Olympic Games (seventh place), said Lowthian never wavered.

‘’She was super disciplined,’’ he said. ‘’Even her first match against the Ukrainian she followed her game plan to a tee. She got in the Korean’s head by asking for a longer distance and Cho never recovered from that.’’

Lowthian is excited about the future.

‘’This is my first Games and this result is huge,’’ she said. ‘’It can only go up from here.’’

Ryan Rousell of Saskatoon, at his second Paralympics, lost his round of 32 opening match 15-6 to Artem Manko of Ukraine.

‘’I did the best that I could but it’s not my primary weapon,’’ said Rousell, 27. ‘’I had no defence against his attacks. The results are not what I would like them to be but that comes with more time and training.

‘’I have a lot of years left to go.’’