HERE’S what Poppy Maskill and her teammates are saying about winning gold for Great Britain in the S14 4x100m mixed freestyle relay event in the Paris Paralympic Games on Sunday night.
Poppy Maskill, age 19, from Middlewich, who swam the third leg:
On backing up her two individual medals, she said: “There is pressure but in a different way.
“If you only let yourself down, it’s one thing, but if you let everyone else down it’s another.
“I just tried my hardest to give Olivia a good lead.
“It’s amazing, we are all pretty young. It’s pretty cool for it to be our first time at the Paralympics.”
Will Ellard, age 18, from Northampton, who swam the first leg:
“To come back after yesterday, it’s a good feat – I didn’t get much sleep yesterday (gold in the men's 200m freestyle).
“I’ll have a couple of days rest before the 200 IM. We are such a young team, we should push on quite a lot between now and LA.”
Rhys Darbey, age 17, from Connah’s Quay, swam the second leg:
On the tactics, he said: “I was definitely trying to make as much room as I could for Poppy after me.
“I think we did a pretty good job of that, I was happy with my swim.
“It’s great, one race, one gold! I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do in LA, everyone in this team is under 20.
“Hopefully that world record can be ours in LA. I’ve got my 200 IM later on this week so to get this out the way is a relief and a weight off the shoulders.”
Olivia Newman-Baronius, age 17, from Aylesbury, who swam the fourth leg:
On winning gold, she said: “It felt really nice when I saw the one next to our name. It’s really exciting to win my first gold.”
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