QUEANBEYAN wheelchair racer Angela Ballard added to her already extensive list of para sport achievements on July 31 when she took out the Commonwealth Games gold medal in the 1500 metre wheelchair race.
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But winning the T54 category race, which covers races over 800 metres in length, while being accustomed to the shorter T53 category and in the pouring rain at Glasgow, her achievement was even better.
Adding to two silver medals and a bronze at the London 2012 Paralympics, two bronze and a silver at Beijing in 2008, and a bronze at Athens in 2004, she won her first Commonwealth Games gold with a time of 3:59.30, just 35 hundredths of a second ahead of Canada's Diane Roy.
"It worked out perfectly for me," she said.
"The rain had a pretty huge effect before the race. We were talking tactics, and we'd list all the girls and talk about how they do in the dry, and we'd go back through that list of girls in the wet and it's different.'
She said the wet weather made the race hard tactically, but during the race she said it actually helped her push towards a big finish.
"Because of the wet weather and the varying degrees which people push well in that, it worked out for me because it spread the field and I was no longer boxed in," she said.
Roy said she was shocked by Ballard's ability to push through the rain, and that this made reeling her in very hard.
"I actually didn't expect her to push as well as she did but she was smart. She went out in front," she said.
"When I was behind her it kind of felt like I was snorkeling. I was just getting wet the whole time."