PARALYMPICS 2024: Para-cyclist Du Preez chosen as flag bearer for closing ceremony

JOHANNESBURG - Bronze medallist Pieter du Preez will carry the South African flag at the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympics on Sunday night.

Team SA ends the Paris Paralympics with six medals – two gold and four bronze medals.

Du Preez won South Africa's third medal at the Paris Paralympic Games, a bronze in the H1 category in para-cycling.

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.

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• PARALYMPICS 2024: Swimmer Kat Swanepoel on having her world flipped upside down, and flying Team SA's flag high

The only Team SA competitor in action on the final day was T11 marathoner Louzanne Coetzee with her guide Claus Kempen. They finished the race in seventh in a time of 3:25:53.

The athlete had already won a bronze medal at the Paris Games in the 1,500m and at the Tokyo Games, she won bronze in the marathon.