Boccia stars Sally Kidson from Salisbury clinched a coveted spot for Great Britain at the Paris Paralympics this summer.

At the qualifying event in Portugal, the BC3 Pair of Sally and Will Arnott from Reading – who use ramps and ramp assistants on court to propel the ball as close as they can to the jack – came back from a disappointing first day, in which they lost to both Greece and Peru, to ultimately beat Japan in the finals.

Sally, 19, explains: “We’re so happy to have been able to qualify the spot for the BC3 Pair and now are waiting for the results of selection for Paris.

“We had a difficult start to the week, losing our two games on day one of competition but we managed to turn it around.”

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The pair beat Poland 4-1 in the semi-final, before going on to beat Japan 4-2 in the finals, securing the gold medal and a place at the Paris Paralympics in the process.

Will said: “Going into this event, we had lost our last ten games so, to put that behind us, shows the huge improvements we’ve made. We’ve been working so hard, together with our ramp assistants, on the training courts so to have it all pay off is amazing.”

Coach Glynn Tromans said: “This result has been two years in the making. We’ve had to go through some difficult times and hard losses but we’ve achieved something special here.”