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| Silver in South Africa for freestyler By Barry Rollings Volume 11, No. 60, February 22, 2007 |
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IF every cloud has a silver lining Pte Stephen Osborne, 25/49RQR, found his in the form of a medal at the recent Durban International Paralympic Committee’s World Swimming Championships. Pte Osborne, who lost a leg in a 2003 motor bike accident and is now a pay clerk at Gallipoli Barracks in Enoggera, came home from South Africa with a silver medal in the men’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay. He found the experience of his first overseas swimming competition a bit daunting, not helped by the fact that while there he received news of the death of his friend Tpr Joshua Porter in the accident in which a Black Hawk crashed into the sea while landing on HMAS Kanimbla on December 7. Those factors detracted from his favoured 100m freestyle event in which he expected to swim around 58sec but went 2sec slower and failed to make the final. “It was my best event, but I put in a bit of a bad swim and failed to make the final,” Pte Osborne said. “The bad news before the race didn’t help.” There was some consolation in taking the relay silver medal behind England and losing by .034sec despite the fact that the Aussie quartet all had to swim in finals the same day as the relay decider. “I swam a butterfly race the same day, but the Brits had only one swimmer who contested a heat and final on the day of the relay,” Pte Osborne said. “I think if the Aussie team had been fully rested, we probably would have won.” Both teams went under the Paralympic world record. England won in 3min 58sec from Australia in 3.58.34. Pte Osborne will swim the 50m and 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly at swimming meetings for the disabled in Canada in July and the US in December. |