Click here to view this content.
Just call Jaco Van Gass Mr Indestructible. The Parachute Regiment veteran, who lost his lower left arm after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan, stormed to cycling gold in Paris despite fearing a collision with a car last week might wreck his Paralympic dream.
Van Gass, who retained his C3 3000 metres individual pursuit title on the track with another victory over team-mate Fin Graham, was left with cuts and a black eye when the accident happened in the French capital while he was checking out the road race course.
“I was heartbroken, at first. I was literally… like this could be my Paralympics done,” Van Gass explained. “I had a big cut to my head. I had a big pain in my knee and yeah, an ambulance was called and I got taken to hospital. We went through significant concussion protocols, I took a day off to let my body settle, then I was back on the bike. No bleed on the brain, no nothing.
“The medical team was amazing. I had a few scans. I was cleared that afternoon and went home and then through [ParalympicsGB] and our amazing medical staff at British Cycling, I was looked after really well and I was back on the bike in two days’ time. And the car? “It was a Renault. So yeah, the car’s just about OK,” he joked. “It wasn’t a hit and run. The gentleman stopped, he got out and he helped me. So yeah, there was an ambulance very quickly on the scene. There was other people that saw it and calmed me down and kept me down on the floor.”
“But I was 100 per cent worried there would be no Games. The next day is always the hardest because that’s when your body is at its most painful. You’re very sore and stiff and so the Saturday was very hard to comprehend whether I would be riding. The Sunday I was on the track riding and I knew I’d be OK. The biggest concern was my knee. My knee hit the car and I had bruising on the bone so I just had to ice that on a regular basis.”
Nothing appears to faze South Africa-born Van Gass, who moved to the UK aged 20 before joining the British army and the Parachute Regiment. Since his life-changing war injury in Afghanistan, he has climbed Everest and admitted yesterday that “there is more adrenaline junkie stuff to come” but that “for the last two years I’ve just been focused on reclaiming this gold at these Games.”
He added that retaining gold was “up there” with his life experiences. “At the moment this is my focus and what I’m here to do. So it’s No 1. I went into Tokyo as a bit of an underdog, came out with two gold medals and three world records.
”Coming in here was a lot more pressure on me to try to retain that. More pressure on myself, not from anyone else. So yeah, to retain that title is a dream come true and I worked really hard. So, big tick in the box. I can now enjoy the rest. I’ve got a busy track session. I’ve got tomorrow and Sunday still and I can now just focus on that. So yeah, I probably need to go cool down.”
Graham was generous in defeat. “It’s a carbon copy to the Tokyo result,” he said. “Obviously it would have been nice to have had a bit of a different one, but this event is the strongest rider on the day wins and today that was Jaco. He’s just super determined. We’ve got such a strong team, the coaching staff, the riders, we all do push each other on and since Tokyo we’ve been trading world titles. I’ve picked up some, he’s picked up some and no one else has had an opportunity to win, so it has been the two of us pushing each other on and getting the best out of each other which has been super good to have.”
Van Gass returned the compliment. “Fin is a phenomenal rider. I think there’s a very big advantage for us as a British team with myself and him on the same team, competitors driving each other, so that’s what keeps our hunger. I think it’s very easy to get complacent when you’re quite far ahead with me and him, we’re never far apart from each other. He pushes me, I push him, and seeing him break that record [earlier in the day] just gave me a hunger in the belly to go harder.
Reflecting army experience, Van Gass said: “I think you just learn to cope with life.”
Elsewhere, the GB para cycling team Lizzi Jordan won a gold medal in the women’s B 1000m time trial, piloted by Danni Khan, and Sophie Unwin securing the bronze medal piloted by Jenny Holl. Blaine Hunt claimed a silver medal in the men’s C4-5 1000m time trial and Matthew Robertson earned a bronze medal in the men’s C2 3000mindividual pursuit.