It's gold (again) for Smithy

British boccia star David Smith OBE has grabbed his third gold medal of the season.

He returns home from the Povoa World Cup in Portugal, with yet another gold in the BC1 Men’s Individual competition. The victory is set to put Smith, Britain’s most successful boccia player of all time, back on top of the world rankings.

In September, he slipped to second place behind Thailand’s Witsanu Huadpradit, having enjoyed an incredible seven years at the top.

david smith obe wins gold in povoa

“To re-establish myself back at number one feels good but I’m not sure for how long – my rival, Huadpradit, has a couple more tournaments to go so potentially, if he does what I can imagine he’ll do on form, I think I may slip to second again by the end of the season,” said Smith. “But for now, being back on top, is good and I’m just trying to make it as difficult as possible for my opponents to catch me.

“But really for Paris Paralympics, it doesn’t really make much difference. We’ll both be seeded going into that. It doesn’t change much apart from semi-finals – the top seed plays the third seed rather than the fourth, but that’s about it,” he added.

For Smith, his season now comes to a close. He will not be competing at the final international tournament, the Heraklion Challenger in Greece, in which a small British squad will be fielded.

In the week that ticket sales opened for the Paris Paralympic Games, Smith is looking forward to playing infront of a crowd once more:

“It’s going to be a brilliant Games – the Paralympics have come on such a long way since my first in Beijing. Paris, I hope, will be a lot like Tokyo except we’ll have a crowd this time which will be cool. Add in some Parisian culture, I’m sure it will be spectacular and I’m looking forward to everything that comes with a Games.”

In Povoa, Smith also competed alongside Claire Taggart and Kalyleigh Haggo as part of the Team event. They were knocked out by Paralympic Champions Thailand in the playoff.

For Haggo, who holds six world records in the sport of framerunning, Povoa will surely last long in the memory after she overcame the world number two and tournament top seed, Rebecca Duarte 5-2 in her opening match. Despite the incredible victory for the Ayrshire BC2 player, who is relatively new to the sport of boccia, she didn’t manage to escape the pools.

KAYLEIGH HAGGO RELISHING INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Meanwhile, Stephen McGuire of Hamilton, Lanarkshire finished fifth in the BC4s after being stopped in the quarter finals by Japan’s Shunsuke Uchida. It may not have been the result he was looking for but it is the fourth top five finish he’s clocked up this season.

Elsewhere in the BC4s, Louis Saunders was also denied a place in the semi-finals after he was defeated by Gershon Haimov of Israel.

Finally, it was a bit of a rollercoaster tournament for Edinburgh’s Patrick Wilson. An admin error and a cancelled flight meant he missed his opening match with ramp assistant, Meredith Greenwood, and therefore was forfeited a 0-8 defeat by default. Racing to Povoa on the soonest flight available, he was able to lodge a 6-3 win over Boris Klohna of Slovakia but lost to Australia’s Daniel Michel 3-4.

Boccia UK now look ahead to the Heraklion Challenger which begins on 22 October and is the final tournament of the season.