Get Kids Going! supported athlete Hope Gordon made history by becoming Great Britain’s first female Para Nordic skier at the Beijing Winter Paralympics. She finished 17th in qualifying in the women’s sprint event, missing out on the top 12 who went through to the semi-finals. “It is cool to be the first girl, but the main thing for me is as long as I’m not the last,” she said “It would be lovely to have more females involved in the sport. Hopefully this can be a platform for the females out there.”
Hope, who comes from Glospie, Scotland, has made her name as a medal winning para-canoeist and made para snow sport debut.
Hope won 2 silver medals at the 2021 Canoe Sprint World Championships, however, she joined up with the GB Para Nordic team just four weeks later when she took to snow for the very first time in Germany. Hope went on to compete in her first World Cup event in Canada where she competed in the cross country sprint event. It’s certainly been an exciting journey for Hope from top class canoeing to Para Nordic skiing.
Hope said “I’m just happy to have got round it in one piece, I would definitely have liked a little bit more but equally I’m quite realistic with my expectations and this morning I told myself ‘I’m not going to be too hard on myself’ and I’m going to try and stick to that because just to be here is so much more than I thought could be achieved within the time I’ve been in the sport.”
She continued “I think it has been a really quick whirlwind but I think as well, all the training I’ve done in however many years before that is the reason why I’m here and it just so happens that I’ve been able to use that for this sport.
“I’ve got 7.5km on Saturday, never done one of them before, so not really got a huge amount of expectations, once again just try and get round it, it’s 7,300 metres longer than I’m used to racing.”
We wish Hope the best of luck for her 7.5km race on Saturday 12th March
Watch out for more of our coverage of the Winter Paralympics and visit our homepage to find out more about the Get Kids Going! team at the Winter Paralympics 2022.