An unforeseen\u00a0Paralympic debut<\/p>\n
As winter set in in the Southern Hemisphere, Dennis headed to Europe to continue training and competing in warmer weather.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a decision which expedited his Paralympic debut in totally unforeseen,\u00a0serendipitous circumstances.<\/p>\n
While Dennis was in the UK, the Secretary General of the Kenyan\u00a0Paralympic Committee called to ask if he was interested in working as a team chauffeur at the Paris 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounded awesome and I could continue my training in between shifts, so I went. During work one day, I got told by the guy who was in charge of the cycling committee that one of the boys had had a crash. As a registered\u00a0triathlete, I was now needed to pilot Kennedy Ogada in the visually impaired road cycling time trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was terrifying, but the legend that is\u00a0Ogada made me feel at home. He said, \u2018Look, I wouldn’t be competing if you weren’t here, so let’s go out and just do our best\u2019.<\/p>\n
The new pair had to wait for a new tandem bicycle to arrive, as the last one was badly damaged in the accident.<\/p>\n
Dennis then revealed that it was his first time riding a tandem bike, three days before racing in the Paralympic Games time trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite something but we got on with it. It was pouring with rain the day the tandem arrived, but we spent the day practising in the wet.<\/p>\n
Dennis and Ogada competed in the men’s cycling event,\u00a0the only African team to qualify for the B1 road race and time trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mechanical issues ultimately prohibited the pair from completing the road race, but they finished 11th in the time trial event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unforeseen\u00a0Paralympic debut As winter set in in the Southern Hemisphere, Dennis headed to Europe to continue training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-368756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}