The opening wheelchair basketball game of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games saw a thrilling Pool A clash between Great Britain women and World Champions Canada.
A tense opening 10 minutes saw both team dominate for periods of play, each having held a four point lead before Canada pushed ahead to close out the quarter by 14-12. The battle continued into the second quarter, Great Britain shooting their way to a 20-16 lead; the World Champions, however, hitting back once again to edge the half by 25-24.
The third quarter saw the Canadian team extend their lead to three points (35-32) with just 10 minutes left on the clock and, with the GB Women’s shots just not falling, it was Canada who earned the first win of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games by 43-36.
Great Britain’s top scorer Helen Freeman said, “We can take a lot of positives, the game was pretty close and we know having had that experience we’ll be ready for the next game.
“I think we have a really good start and that’s something we’ve been working on but we just need to extend it for the full 40 minutes, there were plenty of good moments.
“We are still focusing on doing things that we need to do to improve and hopefully the results will come from that.
“Our learning curve is far higher that any other teams, I think you will see our team improve more than a lot of the teams here so that won’t be our best performance in Rio.”
Whilst Canada’s top scorer Janet McLachlan said, “It’s good to get the first one out of the way. It was such a build up to this point and it feels good to win and to have that first game under our belts, build a bit of confidence and move forward from here.”
Full statistics here https://www.rio2016.com/en/paralympics/wheelchair-basketball-womens-group-a-preliminary
