Grimaldi (19), who was born without a right hand, won the long jump T47 with a personal best jump of 5.62m. She entered the event with a personal best of 5.41m, which she set when she won bronze at the 2015 IPC Athletics World Championships.
After improving on that by 1cm at the Games, she trailed by 17cm heading into her final jump, before tearing in and jumping 20cm further than she had jumped before. Just days later, she placed fourth in the 100m and also competed in the 200m.
While winning the medal still feels surreal to her, being named in the New Year Honours was an additional shock.
"I was pretty excited. It was definitely something I wasn’t expecting to come out of my experience at Rio," she said when asked how she felt when she was informed of the honour.
"It’s a pretty awesome honour that only a few people in New Zealand get to have, so I’m pretty lucky.
"It’s pretty crazy. I feel like [winning gold] only really felt real while I was in the arena and as soon as I left to go out the back it kind of felt really surreal. I still feel that way about it now. It doesn’t feel like it has happened, but I’m not sure anything like that ever does. Rio was such a good experience, such a good team and I had such a good time, but it feels like ages ago now."
Still young, she potentially has multiple Paralympic Games’ in front of her and said that the 2020 Tokyo Games were on her radar. Her next objective, though, was to compete at the World Championships in London in July 2017.
MEMBER OF THE NEW ZEALAND ORDER OF MERIT
Anna Grimaldi
Dunedin
Services to athletics
