The last Irish athlete in action at the Stade de France at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, Kilkenny thrower Mary Fitzgerald, qualified for her second F40 Shot Put final and finished eighth with a best throw of 7.64m.
The 24-year-old from Gowran AC was ranked fifth thanks to her personal best of 8.87m this season but, on an unseasonally wet and cold morning in Paris, just could not find her sharpest form.
She opened her series with 7:49m. Her best throw came in the second round and was enough to make the top eight who got three extra throws, but she could not improve on that.
Reflecting immediately afterwards Fitzgerald said: “Sometimes you just have those days and today wasn’t my day. After all the warm weather training I’ve done the weather was unexpected, but you have to be able to deal with that. I really gave it my best; it just wasn’t to be.”
The gold was won, in a new Paralympic record of 9:10m by Netherland’s world record holder Lara Baars with her very first throw but Poland’s defending champion Renata Sliwinska was the only other woman to reach nine metres (9:00m exactly in the second round) and Tunisia’s former world champion Raja Jebali took bronze with 8.66m.
