PARALYMPICS 2024: Para-cyclist Pieter du Preez wins bronze, SA's third medal
The H1 category in para-cycling is for athletes with highly affected movement in the trunk, legs and hands.
Para-athlete Pieter du Preez will represent South Africa at the 2024 Paralympics. Picture: Jacques Nelles/ Eyewitness News.
JOHANNESBURG - Pieter du Preez has won South Africa's third medal at the Paris Paralympic Games, a bronze in the H1 category in para-cycling.
The South African finished third in the individual time trial in a time of 36:07.05, with Italy's Fabrizio Cornegliani winning the gold in 34:50.45 and the silver taken by Belguim's Maxime Hordies in 35:11.13.
The H1 category in para-cycling is for athletes with highly affected movement in the trunk, legs and hands.
The C6 quadriplegic finished sixth at the 2012 London Games in the 400-meter wheelchair track racing and won a gold medal in the para-cycling at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, which were moved to 2021 due to COVID-19.
Du Preez scooped a gold medal in the time trial at the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow and is the current defending champion with his rainbow jersey tally at six in the individual time trial.
Supa Piet, as he's affectionately known, was nominated for the Laureus World Sports Awards in 2016, has won the Berlin Marathon more than six times and is a multiple African and world record holder, a world champion, and he only has 15% of the muscle function of an able-bodied person due to a cycling accident in 2003.
READ MORE:
PARALYMPICS 2024: Paralympic champion Pieter du Preez hopes to leave his mark at Paris Games
UCI Cycling World Champs: Du Preez reigns supreme with gold
PARALYMPICS 2024: 'Athletics is a tool I use to represent God' - Para-athlete Liezel Gouws