Patrick wins gold. Twice!

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 9, Issue 430, 31 March 1992, Page 1

Patrick wins gold. Twice!

Ruapehu ski racer Patrick Cooper has beaten the world and taken two gold medals at Albertville, France. At the time of going to print, he had two races to go, the Giant Slalom and the Downhill, and was in with a good chance for a hatrick. The 23 year old beat 83 other competitors from 24 countries, with a combined time of 1 minute 14.10 seconds, in the slalom race at the fifth Paralympic Winter Games. His second gold came on the weekend when he finished the Super G at Tignes, near Albertville, beating 150 others. In the Super G his time was 1 minute 18.78 seconds, ahead of his rival Rik Heid at 1:19.08. The course was 1820 metres with 35 gates dropping 432 vertical meters. "This is not a surprise," said his mother Evelyn Cooper. "He has been beating all comers in the United States and was in with a very good chance to win." She said he would have been bitterly disappointed not to win a medal. She said his reaction to the first win, when she spoke to him by phone after the race was quiet. "You know Patrick - he's pretty matter-of-fact." His combined time was easily ahead of silver medalist Rik Heid of the USA (1:17.94) and Ewold Vool of Germany (1:18.25) and he recorded the fastest individual time as well as the fastest combined time. He faced three more races in which he was also considered to stand a good chance. The events were giant slalom, super G, and downhill. Patrick won silver in the slalom four years ago at the paralympics in Innsbruck in Austria. He has been training at Winter Park, Colorado for the past six months with the America team and was regarded then as among the world's top disabled racers. He had featured in the first three in a series of competitions earlier this month against the Americans, who are mainly Vietnam veterans. T urn page 2

Gold medal wins for Patrick

From page 1 He competes in the LW-4 class of disable skiing. He lost is lower leg when hit by a bus at age five. He has been skiing for 19 years. Patrick has raced against able bodied skiers and held his FIS licence until recently. But the expense of travelling to and from FIS events has meant he has had to put this racing on hold at present. Patrick lists among his ambitions to ski at over 160 kilometres per hour.