Isaac produces Tower-ing performance in Rio

Wheelchair racer Isaac Towers secured a top-five finish in the T34 800m final at his first Paralympics in Brazil.
Isaac TowersIsaac Towers
Isaac Towers

The 17-year-old Catterall ace set a new personal best time of one minute, 43.45 seconds in the final in Rio.

The former AKS pupil had been the slowest of the eight qualifiers from Tuesday’s heats but gave his all in a final which saw the Paralympic record broken for the third time in two days.

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Towers’ time was a massive improvement on Tuesday’s 1.47.45 and improved on his previous best of 1.44.67 which won him gold at the European Championships in Irtaly in June.

The battle for gold turned into a head to head between Mohamed Alhammadi of the United Arab Emirates and Walid Ktila of Tunisia, and it was Alhammadi who emerged victorious in 1.40.24, smashing the world record he had set the previous day.

He beat Ktila by seven hundredths of a second, with the Australian Rheed McCracken third and Finland’s Henri Manni fourth.

AKS headteacher Mike Walton said:“Isaac has done fantastically well to reach the T34 800m final and the whole school community is immensely proud of him. Having an ex-pupil achieve so much is a real inspiration to our pupils and we look forward to celebrating more of his success in the future”, Mike Walton, Headmaster AKS Lytham.

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