Paralympian wants a holistic approach to disability sport
Paralympic Debutante Victoria Kingstone, 43, has been knocked out at the quarter-final stage of the Women’s Individual W1 Archery quarter-final. She lost the head-to-head match, scoring 122 against with Kim Ok Geum of Korea’s 128.
The match started out neck-and-neck, with Kingston leading by a slender 1 point going into the third round. But she then sent a couple of arrows into the blue area, with a 6 and 5 proving impossible to recover from against a consistent competitor.
“Obviously you want to win every match you shoot in and I think it was just that one end that let me down. But to be able to shoot two matches on a finals field at a Paralympic Games is not too shabby.”
“It would’ve been nice if the sun had come out but at least it wasn’t raining. Yesterday was so, so wet.”
Victoria Kingstone in the Women’s Individual W1 Archery Competition this morning. She scored an international PB of 608 in the Ranking Rounds. Image: ParalympicsGB, imagecomms.
Kingston triumphed in her first elimination match in the W1 archery earlier this morning, scoring 128 points to win against Brazil’s Julia Cristina Ferreira da Silva, 39, who scored just 77. Ferreira da Silva appeared to have some difficulty with her bow and had two zero scores after failing to shoot within the allocated 30 seconds.
The British archer went into the 1/8 match seeded 6th and shot four 10s, despite being “slightly terrified” ahead of the elimination rounds. She said “I’m really relieved. I think I was more scared waiting to go on. My first couple of shots, everything was shaking.”
Kingstone was in good spirits despite her Paralympic pursuit coming to an end. Her goal going into the Games was a modest one: “it’s a bit of a cliche, you just want to go out and enjoy yourself.” So after shooting a new international PB of 608 in the ranking rounds, she was “really, really happy”.
“You always want to keep doing what you’ve been doing in training but to actually do better is a pleasant surprise. I love competing with the other women. We’re not opponents, we’re friends and everyone celebrates each other.”
Archer Victoria Kingstone Reached the Women’s Individual W1 Quarter-Final at her Debut Paralympics in Paris. Photo: Lauren Lethbridge 2024.
Shortly after taking up archery, Kingston earned the nickname “The Destroyer”:
“In para-sport you often have to think outside the box and adapt equipment. When I first started, I had a lot of rather homemade equipment to enable me to shoot. And I had a bit of a reputation for breaking things, so a technician at the time called me The Destroyer.”
“I think people assume it’s going to be something to do with destroying my opponents, but it’s not”.
She previously spent 15 years playing wheelchair basketball, until a femur fracture and diagnosis of osteoporosis forced her to stop.
“I needed to find a sport that was slightly less physical. I went to a Paralympic sports day and had a go at archery. They obviously saw something in me, I managed not to kill anyone. It snowballed from there and literally one year to the day later I went to my first international competition, so that was exceptionally quick.”
“You probably can’t get two sports that are further away in terms of the dynamic. In archery, although there is a team element to it, it’s very much you and your bow.”
The women’s Archery Events continue this afternoon at Invalides, Paris. Photo: Lauren Lethbridge 2024.
Kingstone’s still involved in wheelchair basketball as an official and wants to see greater inclusion and a holistic approach to sport. Ahead of the Games, Kingstone said “I’ve got a congenital impairment, so growing up in the 80s and 90s, schools were not geared towards enabling sport participation if you had a disability.”
“There are so many benefits, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to improve your physical health or your mental health or just having a social space to be with people.”
“Particularly if you go to a mainstream environment or you’re not around other people with disabilities, there are so many kind of tips, tricks and hacks that you learn from the people around you. So there are unrecognised benefits of being involved in sport as a disabled person. It’s phenomenal how sport can be adapted for pretty much everyone.”
The W1 classification is for archers who shoot from a wheelchair and have an impairment affecting the lower limbs, trunk and at least one upper limb. All other athletes compete in the Open class.
Jodie Grinham and Phoebe Paterson-Pine continue their medal pursuit in the Women’s Individual Open competition this afternoon.
By Lauren Lethbridge, ADJ Diploma Student
https://procrastipoise.substack.com/