Brilliant Bywater inspires Great Britain to Paralympic basketball bronze
BySportsbeat
Published 17/09/2016 at 20:14 GMT
Terry Bywater inspired Great Britain to their third Paralympic men's wheelchair basketball bronze in four Games to avenge the disappointment of London 2012.
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
Bywater has now won three and lost two bronze medal matches at the Games but the home defeat four years ago hit him hard and this righted all those wrongs.
He produced a near flawless offensive display as coach Haj Bhania's team secured a dramatic 82-76 overtime win over world bronze medallists Turkey.
The ever-reliable Ian Sagar again weighed in with 20 points while Abdi Jama, Phil Pratt and Gaz Choudhry all made telling contributions in a strong all-around performance by the 12-strong squad.
Turkey took a two point lead with just 25 seconds remaining but Bywater held his nerve to force the game to overtime.
Great Britain quickly slipped to a six-point deficit before a storming comeback, including a long-range three pointer from Bywater decisively switched momentum in overtime.
Sagar praised his team-mate and admitted he had an extra special motivation for the win.
The 34-year-old said: "My daughter sent me a message this morning, saying she'd been at school and they’d been talking about the Paralympics.
"They were showing a picture of me and she said 'that's my dad', she immediately thought she was famous and everyone wants to be her friend, and she told me that I had to go and win the medal now.
"I was reminded of that on the court and every time I caught the ball, I had that in me.
"Terry Bywater doing what he did is just unbelievable. He turns up for big games. We call him 'The Peacock' because peacocks like to show their feathers, and he showed his today.”
And the win was also extra special for seven-time Paralympian Simon Munn as the 48-year old added to his collection of two bronzes and a silver dating back to the 1992 Games in Barcelona.
He said: "It's just a fantastic feeling to end my career with a bronze medal. It could have been so much better, but the fact is that we're third in the world and we go home with a bronze medal.
"I think four Paralympics now out of my seven we've medalled, that's fantastic and I owe it all to these guys, they did an awesome job.
"The youngsters who have come in and played at this level is just phenomenal. I remember my first Paralympics and it was nothing like this."
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