The Swiss voice in the world since 1935

Paralympics: Swiss claim gold medals in swimming and athletics

Leo
' Keystone / Ennio Leanza

Swiss athletes claimed three gold medals on Sunday at the Paris Paralympics in 100m breaststroke and 800m athletic events.

Leo McCrea won the 100m breaststroke to claim gold. The dual national has been racing for Switzerland for five years, but lives and studies in England. The 100m breaststroke is McCrea’s favourite distance, but he was not the race favourite. He beat his personal record by two seconds to finish in 1’27 and added an Olympic medal to his list of achievements, which includes bronze at the 2024 European Championships and silver at the 2023 World Championships.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Switzerland also sparkled in the 800m athletics events. Manuela Schär won the T54 800 m retaining her Olympic title from Tokyo 2021. The Lucerne native made the difference in the final straight, overtaking two rivals. It was also her ninth medal in the sixth Paralympics of her career. There may still be more to come: she will now be focusing all her efforts on the marathon, which will be her next competition in Paris.

Catherine Debrunner won a second gold medal at the Paris Paralympics. The Thurgau native won the T53 800m final. In front of a packed Stade de France, the Swiss athlete led the race from start to finish after a fantastic start. In Tokyo in 2021, she came third. Debrunner will have other opportunities to fill her trophy cabinet. She will be lining up in four other distances.

Adapted from French by DeepL/ac

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

The storm from the USA continues to sweep through the Swiss stock market

More

US storm continues to sweep through Swiss stock market

This content was published on The Swiss stock market continued to trade in the red mid-afternoon on Monday, following in the wake of the world's stock markets, which fell heavily as a result of the trade war launched by Donald Trump.

Read more: US storm continues to sweep through Swiss stock market
Swiss vote on e-ID likely

More

Swiss likely to vote on e-ID

This content was published on The referendum committee announced in Bern on Monday that it had collected more than 60,000 signatures against the e-ID project. The initials still need to be approved.

Read more: Swiss likely to vote on e-ID
Increase in offences committed by minors in Ticino

More

Crimes committed by minors increase in Ticino

This content was published on The number of offences committed by minors in canton Ticino, southern Switzerland, rose by over 20% in 2024 compared to the previous year.

Read more: Crimes committed by minors increase in Ticino

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR