Montjane, Mhlongo look to serve and sprint Team SA to Paralympic glory

Chinese judoka Shi Yijie. Photos: X/@ChinaDaily

By Yanga Sibembe

25 Aug 2024

The City of Light will once again pull out all the stops to host the best athletes in the world as they compete for a coveted place on the podium.

What began as an informal gathering for British World War 2 veterans with serious injuries in 1948, and just happened to coincide with the Olympic Games in London that year, has become one of the biggest events on the global sports calendar.

From that small gathering, the Paralympics eventually came to be in 1960. Decades later, the tournament is a stage that differently abled athletes strive to reach – and a podium finish is always a welcome bonus.

Not long after bringing down the curtain on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, France is set to host 4,400 athletes from around the world for the Paralympic Games. The 17th edition will feature 22 sports, from various track and field events to swimming, blind soccer and wheelchair tennis.

At the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the Chinese comfortably topped the medal table, collecting 207 podium placings in total. Britain was second with 124 medals, and the Russian Olympic Committee athletes had 118 among them. However, in terms of countries, the US’s 104 medals ensured it a third place.

China has finished first in the overall Paralympics medal tally at every Games since 2004. It will be out to extend this streak of dominance in Paris, though the likes of Great Britain and the US would want to derail the Asian nation.

Determined judoka

Chinese judoka Shi Yijie, who will make her Paralympic debut, is out to ensure that she plays her part. Despite participating internationally for the first time in 2023, Shi has taken her sport by storm.

The 24-year-old, who is completely blind and competes in the J1 under-57kg category, secured gold medals at the World Blind Judo Grand Prix events in Egypt and Azerbaijan in 2023. In 2024, she continued her winning streak by claiming gold at the Grand Prix in Heidelberg, Germany, in February.

Despite her success after stepping onto the international stage, Shi (who has been a judoka for 11 years) is tackling each challenge as it comes. Nevertheless, she is also clear about how she wants to perform.

“For the upcoming Games I will take it one step at a time – focus on performing well in each game, and not let myself have any regrets. If you enjoy the competition, then you will get good results,” she said in an interview published on Paralympics.org.

Paralympic master

While Shi will be one of the Paralympic debutants, a number of veterans will be out to add to their reputations as greats.

One of them is American multisport athlete Oksana Masters, who won both the time trial event and the road race in the women’s para cycling event in Tokyo to take her medal tally at the Paralympics to 17. Of those, 14 have come from the Winter Paralympics.

Masters, who has competed in adaptive rowing, para cycling, cross-country skiing and the biathlon at the Paralympics, was born in Ukraine three years after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Radiation poisoning from that horrific incident led to her being born with multiple physical defects. She had six toes on each foot, webbed fingers with no thumbs on both hands, and her legs had no weight-bearing bones. Her biological parents abandoned her.

She spent the first seven years of her life moving from foster home to foster home in Ukraine, until she was adopted by American speech therapist Gay Masters. But she had more setbacks when, despite numerous surgeries to try to correct her legs, both were amputated above the knee before she was 14 years old.

Now 35, Masters arrives in Paris with nothing to prove. She has done it all, tackling every challenge thrown her way and shattering all kinds of stereotypes in the process.

“That’s the cool thing, which a lot of people don’t realise about Paralympians – myself or my teammates. We’re constantly adapting to our environment because the world was never created for us,” she told The Guardian before going to Paris.

Paralympics Kgothatso Montjane of South Africa plays a forehand against Yui Kamiji of Japan in the ladies’ wheelchair singles second-round match at Wimbledon on 11 July 2024. (Photo: Sean M Haffey / Getty Images)

Team SA

One of South Africa’s realistic podium hopes, wheelchair tennis star Kgothatso Montjane, will have to contend with a superstar who will be in Paris.

Diede de Groot from the Netherlands has won five French Open titles at Roland-Garros, where the tennis tournament will be staged.

De Groot, a 23-time singles Grand Slam winner, is the defending champion after defeating Montjane’s friend and doubles partner Yui Kamiji in the Tokyo final three years ago.

Though De Groot will be difficult to topple, the likes of Montjane and Kamiji will fancy their chances.

Despite being a regular in Grand Slam semifinals, Montjane has not gone beyond the quarterfinals in her four previous Paralympic Games appearances.

This is something she will definitely want to rectify in Paris. But it remains to be seen whether Montjane will be in the right frame of mind to compete well in Paris after the death of her mother, Margaret Montjane, on 31 July.

Otherwise, Montjane has had a strong 2024, winning the Wimbledon women’s doubles title alongside Kamiji in mid-July.

Another South African medal prospect will be sprinter Mpumelelo Mhlongo. The 30-year-old will be one of South Africa’s flag bearers in Paris, along with swimmer Kat Swanepoel, who is aiming for a podium placing after winning gold and silver at the 2023 World Para Swimming Championships in Manchester.

Chinese judoka Shi Yijie. (Photo: X/@ChinaDaily)

Mhlongo, who is the reigning South African sportsman of the year with a disability, will compete in the 100m and long jump. At Tokyo 2020 he was a finalist, and in Paris he will be gunning for a medal, especially since he has been in great form so far this season.

Mhlongo was victorious in the T44 100m race at the World Para Athletics Championships in Japan in May, defending the title he also won in 2023.

“I am looking forward to the Paralympic athletes reminding our community how important they are and the joy we get in experiencing these global events with them,” Mhlongo told Vuk’uzenzele, the Government Communication and Information System’s publication.

Ntando Mahlangu, another sprinter who would have been pivotal to South African potentially improving on the seven medals won in Tokyo, will miss out as he recovers from a car crash.

The double amputee suffered a broken neck and has not recovered sufficiently to travel to Paris and defend the T61 200m and T63 long jump titles he won for Team South Africa in Tokyo.

The 2024 Paris Paralympic Games will run from 28 August until 8 September. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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Determined judoka

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