Australian Paralympic champion robbed of bike at gunpoint in Rio

A Paralympic champion athlete from Australia has had her bike stolen at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro, the city where she is due to compete in her seventh Paralympic Games this summer.

A physiotherapist with the Australian Paralympic team also had her bicycle stolen in Sunday’s incident, which has heightened concerns about security in the city that will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in August and September.

Liesl Tesch, aged 47, won a gold medal in sailing at London 2012, just days after the death of her mother from cancer. She had  won two silver and one bronze medal in wheelchair basketball at  previous editions of the Paralympic Games.

A geography teacher from Queensland, Tesch had been left with only partial feeling in her legs after breaking her back in a mountain bike accident when she was aged 19.

BBC News reports that at Rio’s Flamengo Beach on Sunday, she and physiotherapist Sarah Ross were approached by two men, one of whom had a gun, and that the pair initially asked them for money.

She said that when she told the man with the gun that she had no money on her, "he just pushed me on the shoulder with his bare hand and I just fell down on the cobblestones."

It’s not the first time that robberies have taken place during preparations for this summer’s events, with three athletes belonging to Spain’s Olympic sailing team victims of an armed robbery in May.

And in August last year, members of a film crew at the road cycling test event in the city were also robbed at gunpoint.

> Film crew at Rio cycling road race test event robbed at gunpoint

Following the weekend’s incident, the Australian Olympic Committee’s chef de mission to Rio, Kitty Chiller, commented: "We're demanding that the level of security forces, which number about 100,000, is reviewed and also we are also asking that they are deployed earlier prior to Games time, especially around training and competition venues.

"It's not an isolated incident. It's got to a point now that steps and measures are taken to ensure that all our team members who go to Rio for the Olympic Games next month are safe."

Besides security concerns, the state government in Rio has this week declared a financial crisis and the country is in the grip of economic and political turmoil, with its president facing impeachment proceedings.

Fears over the Zika virus have led American cyclist Tejay van Garderen, whose wife is pregnant, to rule himself out of being selected for the Olympics.

>Tejay van Garderen pulls out of Olympics due to Zika virus threat

The UCI meanwhile has expressed grave concerns over whether the velodrome that is due to host the track cycling events will be completed, while in April part of a clifftop cycle track built ahead of this summer’s sporting events was swept into the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of two lives.

> Judge orders closure of Rio cycleway built for Olympic visitors