Credit: The Local

With 18 gold, 26 silver and 22 bronze medals in this year’s Paralympic summer games, Germany was not one of the runaway success stories leaving London. But the squad bagged three last-minute gold medals on Sunday, one of which for a record-breaking long-jump by Markus Rehm.

Climbing three places since the 2008 Beijing games, Germany’s gold medals included equestrian, shot-put, table tennis, and athletics events.

Stand-out athletes included 59-year-old Marianne Buggenhagen, who collected silver in the shot-put. The medal was her thirteenth, who said she was “motivated like you couldn’t believe,” for the Rio games in four years time.

The final gold was won by table tennis champion Jochen Wollmert, for whom it was his fifth medal. He put his win down to “47 years of experience” under pressure.

Table tennis player Thomas Schmidberger carried the German flag at the sold-out closing ceremony on Sunday. The outstanding performances at, huge interest in and bombastic staging of, this year’s Paralympics have been widely hailed as marking a huge step forward for the perception of disabled people.

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