Wheelchair basketball player Terry Bywater and wheelchair tennis player Lucy Shuker have been selected as Paralympics GB’s flagbearers at the Paralympic Games opening ceremony.
The athletes, who are competing at their fifth and seventh Games respectively, will be responsible for carrying the Union Jack at the event to mark the Games’ opening, taking place at Paris’s Place de la Concorde on Wednesday evening.
The pair follow in the footsteps of Paralympic greats like swimmer Ellie Simmonds and archer John Stubbs, who were named the flagbearers in Tokyo’s Games three years ago, and David Weir and Dame Sarah Storey, who carried the flag in their home Games 12 years ago.
This year’s Games, which come a fortnight after Paris hosted a successful Olympic Games at which Team GB finished seventh in the medals table, take place between August 28 and September 8.
Shuker and Bywater have seven Paralympic medals between them.
Paris will be Bywater’s seventh Games, having his first appearance at Sydney’s Paralympiad in 2000. Since then he has won four bronze medals in the wheelchair basketball.
Shuker, 44, first competed for GB in Beijing 16 years ago, winning a silver and two bronze medals with her now-retired former partner Jordanne Whiley. This year Shuker will compete in the women’s singles wheelchair draw.
The two flagbearers were voted for by their Paralympics GB team-mates. All 215 athletes competing at the Games got a vote, and every sport was allowed to nominate one representative for selection.
Shuker called her selection an “incredible honour”, adding that it was especially “humbling” because she had been “nominated and voted for by team-mates”.
Bywater, who is playing in his 25th year of competitive wheelchair basketball, said: “It’s a dream come true – I feel quite emotional. This is my seventh Games, I actually wear the number seven vest too…
“This is not just about me, this is for the 215 athletes that are here, all the staff, my family, my wife, my son, my family that have passed away that always followed me – I’ll be doing it for everyone.”
This year’s Games will see over 200 Paralympics GB athletes – including big names like Jonnie Peacock, Storey and wheelchair basketball star Will Pratt – compete across 19 sports.
UK Sport, the government’s sports body, has set a target of between 100 and 140 medals for GB’s para athletes.