The Paris Paralympics: Gregg Warburton starred as Great Britain opened the wheelchair basketball competition in the Paris Paralympics with an 76-55 victory over Germany in the first game of Thursday.
Warburton who was a Paralympic bronze medalist in 2016 and 2020, picked up a whopping 24 points to win his nation victory in their debut Group A match on the Bercy Arena. “Opening game, obviously a few nerves, but we got them out of the way early,” declared Warburton 27, 27.
“We’ve got a lot of work still to do, but first one in the books, good start.” The Lancashire native was amputated both feet at the age of six months and was born with an anomaly to the left side of his arm, which resulted in it being smaller and only having two fingers.
Despite his impressive display on court Warburton had some flaws in his play: “It’s far from perfect. There were some mistakes that I made on easy shots. “But I’m satisfied with how the game played out and, the most important thing is that we won an win. “It was an honour to play in front of such a good crowd,” said the coach of the thousands of fans who crowded the arena.
The Britons started off fast in the first quarter and Captain Philip James Pratt assisting Warburton to score their first two points of the tournament. Matthias Guntner led the fightback in the second quarter, as the Germans were able to overcome their slow beginning, but Britain was still ahead 32-25 at the half, despite Guntner quickly found his shooting stride and end the game with 19 points.
In the middle of the third quarter, Thomas Boehme sank an excellent three-pointer that cut the gap to just four points, and put tension on Britain. Germany was now in ascendancy, with Britain getting more frequent misses from the floor. However, points from Warburton as well as free-throws of Ben Fox kept the Britons at bay. Britain improved their advantage to 10 points by the middle of the third quarter. They was able to hold off Germany in the closing quarters when they cruised to a stunning opening victory.
