Fox urges wheelchair basketball stars to make history

Ben Fox believes ParalympicsGB’s men’s wheelchair basketball team are playing for the players who have come before as they advanced to the semi-finals. 

Fox and his teammates are now just one win away from the gold medal match, a place they have not been since 1996 when they won silver. 

Fox led the team in scoring as they wore down a battling Australia side, eventually triumphing 84-64 at the Bercy Arena. 

“Australia have got a long history in this sport,” Fox said. “They know what it takes to win the Paralympics and they gave us a real physical test today.  

“We expected it but we were a bit flustered in the first half, we regrouped and in the second half we put out a good performance. 

“We are not only playing for ourselves but we are playing for the past as well, the players that came before us, a couple of them were up in the stands supporting us today and it means the world to us.  

“It would mean everything to us to get to the final, but we are not going to get too ahead of ourselves. We’ll recover and we’ll go again in two days’ time.” 

GB continued to be reeled in by the team in green and gold before a change in game plan paid off in the final quarter. 

A potent combination of Fox, Lee Manning and Gregg Warburton powered their side to the victory, scoring 69 points between them. 

1996 Paralympian Dan Johnson was in the crowd alongside Richard Pullen, Gary Peel and Lucas Warburton to see the team advance and set up a semi-final meeting with Germany. 

The team have won four bronze medals since 1996, and with the most experienced member of the team, Terry Bywater, making his debut in 2000, no one on the team has played in a Paralympic final before. 

However, several members of the team were part of the side that became world champions in 2018 before winning silver five years later. 

GB beat Thursday’s opponents Germany 76-55 in the group stages but Gregg Warburton believes what has gone before has to be forgotten. 

He said: “The number one message is that the game from the group has gone, it is a clean slate, we have got a fresh opponent.  

“We will take the good and the bad from that game and find out how we can better in the small margins, the 1 per cents and keep taking care of the basics. 

“I truly believe we will be in a good position at the end of the day if we keep doing that to a good level.”