Another win for Paralympics New Zealand London team
Tuesday 11 September 2012, 12:38PM
By Paralympics New Zealand
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Paralympics New Zealand’s successful London 2012 campaign has resulted in a gold of their own.
Six gold, seven silver, and four bronze medals earned by Kiwi athletes during the 10 day tournament has propelled New Zealand to the number one spot on medals per capita.
A total of seventeen medals, six more than were won in Beijing, has resulted in New Zealand leapfrogging from third to first place in just four years.
New Zealand is also ranked 3rd on the gold medals per team scoreboard, based on its 24 athletes, behind Fiji who tops the list after nabbing 1 gold with one athlete competing in the high jump and China, who took the overall medal tally gong, in second place.
NZ Paralympics Chef de Mission Duane Kale was delighted with the result, considering their original target was to improve by one place, “this is great news, we set a target of going one better than Beijing, but to get to first in one games cycle was very unexpected.”
Kale also pointed to the sports that delivered all bar one of New Zealand’s seventeen medals having been targeted with greater investment over the past Paralympic cycle. “Swimming and Cycling have delivered what we thought they were capable of. We identified them following Beijing and it’s been pleasing to see that come to fruition.”
The bulk of the NZ athletes and support crew will arrive back into Auckland International Airport on Wednesday the 12th of September at 10:50 am, on board Singapore Airlines flight SQ285 from Singapore.
Cameron Leslie, Danny McBride, Tim Dempsey, Daniel Sharp and Sue Reid will return to New Zealand at a later date. Tim Prendergast will remain here in London where he is based.
Connecting flights are as follows
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Sophie Pascoe, Mary Fisher, Laura Thompson and Phillipa Gray will remain in Auckland on Wednesday night and travel home on Thursday afternoon. Please contact Mel Dawson on 0204 0044 799 for these details.
Wellington: Duane Kale, Chef de Mission -NZ439 arriving at 2.30pm
Warrick Allan (Equestrian Manager), Ian Murphy (Medical) - NZ457 arriving at 3.25pm
New Plymouth: Nathan Smith (Cycling) - NZ8805 arriving at 2.50pm
Christchurch: Anthea Gunner (Equestrian), Malcolm Humm
(Paralympics New Zealand) - NZ539 arriving at 5.00pm
Dunedin: Holly Robinson (Athletics), Esther Price (Swimming Manager) - NZ673 arriving at 4.25pm
Invercargill: Kylie Young (Cycling) - NZ8077 arriving at 8.10pm