On fire Stephen McGuire delivers supersonic victory

If boccia players are the rockstars of the Paralympics then Stephen McGuire doesn’t miss a beat when asked about which front man he’d want to be.

“It’s got to Oasis, either Noel or Liam,” he joked. Paris organisers missing a trick not put ‘Roll with It’ on the DJ’s playlist for a sport that features leather balls being launched towards a jack.

McGuire would have loved to join the thousands of others in the frustrating queue for tickets last weekend but he was a bit busy winning Paralympic gold in Paris.

This is his fourth appearance at the Games and, after defeats in three semi-finals, he’s finally cracked the podium, dominating Colombia’s Edilson Chica Chica to win a tactical battle and live up to his ‘Mr Strategy’ nickname.

There’s a lot of great sport in Paris at the moment but perhaps you’ll find the beating heart of these Games at the end of Metro Line 8 in the south-west of the city.

Boccia is a sport unique to the Paralympics and played by athletes with a disability affecting locomotor function. It’s a game of control, accuracy and tactics and McGuire loves outthinking rivals more than anything else.

“All through my career I’ve loved strategic games, my team-mates don’t play me at chess anymore because they can’t beat me,” he added.

“Any sport where I can think a few moves ahead I love. My whole game is about tactics, my power is not the best, so I love getting the strategy right.”

McGuire’s involvement in Paris was not confirmed until a few weeks ago, the 40-year-old taking one of the last spots on the team after initially failing to qualify for the team event.

He was starting to think the Paralympics were beyond him, soon after returning empty-handed from Tokyo, he broke his femur and knee in a fall at home and didn’t return to the court for 18 months.

“I’ve played this sport for 20 years and I’ve been in every possible final, apart from the Paralympics, I’ve never even been to the podium,” he added.

“I was starting to feel this event was getting away from me, two fourths in London, another fourth in Rio, I didn’t even make the semis in Tokyo, it just shows why you should never give up.

“I felt really confident in the final. My flatmate is David Smith and he’s won three golds, he told me to have no regrets and not to settle for silver, just go for it.

“Just getting here has not been easy, it was a lot of hard work, a lot of soul searching and I was the last person to be named on this team, the others knew months ago. However, it’s been an unbelievable season, I’ve made the final in every competition I’ve entered.

“There weren’t many nerves, there were more in the semi-final because I’ve lost the last three. It’s a Paralympic final, I may never reach another one, so I told myself to enjoy it.”

There is arguably no sport that does as much for inclusivity here as boccia, even more important on the day the British Paralympic Association revealed just a quarter of the UK’s 1.5 million schoolchildren with disabilities regularly taking part in PE lessons.

“This sport allows someone with a severe impairment achieve in high-level sport, that’s why it’s so special,” said Boccia GB’s coach Claire Morrison.

“We all watch a lot of sport but we don’t seem to associate athletes with people with conditions like Stephen and his team-mates. This sport is about showing anything is possible.”