A few days after being pipped for the podium by an agonising margin in her 100m event, the Dunedin athlete claimed bronze in the 200m T47 at the world para athletics championships in New Delhi.
Grimaldi, 28, claimed a richly deserved medal in one of the feature races on the last day of the championships.
She was up against one of the deepest fields at the event, which required three rounds of competition to separate the athletes.
It was also an event that featured one of the rock stars of the para athletics scene.
Kiara Rodrigues, of Ecuador, headed to New Delhi with a target on her back after winning the 100m and long jump in T47 competition at the Paris Paralympics.
The 22-year-old went one better in India, claiming a trio of golds in the 100m, long jump T47 and 200m.
It took Rodriguez running a world record yesterday to claim top spot in the 200m ahead of silver medallist Maria Da Silva, of Brazil.
Grimaldi’s bronze medal-winning time of 24.82sec was a season-best performance, coming in her fifth race of the week.
She held off Marie Ngoussou Ngouyi, of France, the 16-year-old rising star who bettered Grimaldi by a hair — just 0.0001sec — in the 100m T47 final earlier in the championships.
The medal effort was Grimaldi’s second race of the day, having easily qualified through to the final from the semifinals earlier.
It was her seventh world championships medal to go with three silver (long jump in 2019, 2023 and 2024) and three bronze (long jump in 2015, 100m in 2023 and 2024).
While Grimaldi was adding more global medals to her collection, New Zealand team-mate Will Stedman was doing the same in the men’s long jump T36 final, winning a sensational silver.
Stedman produced a remarkably consistent series with leaps of 5.80m, 5.79m, 5.81m and two performances of 5.83m.
All of the New Zealander’s jumps were beyond the former championships record of 4.75m.
Gold went to Evgnii Torsunov, competing as a neutral athlete, who unleashed two world record leaps, equalling his own record of 6.05m in round one and shattering that mark in round four with 6.14m.
It was a close battle between Stedman and bronze medal winner Oleksandr Lytvyneko, of Ukraine, with just 2cm separating the pair at the end of the day. Lytvyneko’s performance of 5.81m in round five was a lifetime best for the 35-year-old.
Mitch Joynt was the final Kiwi on the track in New Delhi, lining up in the 200m T64 final.
Joynt could not replicate his medal-winning performances from Kobe (2024) or Paris (2023), finishing sixth in a competitive final.
Earlier in the day, Joynt had bettered his own New Zealand and Oceania record in the 200m T64 heats, running 22.98sec to qualify for the final.
New Zealand ended the world para athletics championships with seven medals.
Grimaldi’s bronze and Stedman’s silver joined Danielle Aitchison’s two sprint gold medals, gold for Lisa Adams and silver for Otago great Holly Robinson in shot put, and Stedman’s 400m bronze.
- Allied Media
