Five-Ring Circus

On Friday, Great Britain’s David Wetherill matched up against Thomasz Kusiak of Germany in the preliminary rounds of Paralympic table tennis. In the fourth game of the best-of-five match, Wetherill pulled off what was surely the shot of the tournament.

The 22-year-old Wetherill suffers from multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, a congenital disease in which cartilage ossifies. As a result, he plays in Class 6 of the Paralympics table tennis tournament, which is reserved for players with “severe impairments of legs and arms.” (The divisions for physically disabled athletes go from Class 1—“no sitting balance with severe reduction of function in the playing arm”—to Class 10—“very mild impairments in legs, or very mild impairment of playing arm, or severe to moderate impairment of non-playing arm, or moderate impairment of the trunk." Class 11 is for intellectually disabled athletes.)

In accepting congratulations on Twitter for his amazing shot, Wetherill made sure to point out that he lost the match. “Need opportunities to make it right these next 4 years,” he wrote.