Patricia Wright is receiving a golden welcome in Chatham-Kent after returning home as a world champion.
She was hoping for a top-10 finish at the World Karate Federation championships in Linz, Austria, and she ended up finishing at the very top.
"I was thrilled," says Wright. "I won my subdivision, so I was anticipating maybe second."
Competing in the intellectually impaired division, Wright managed to beat her Canadian teammate Natalie Olson for the gold medal.
"I had competed against [Olson] before in Las Vegas in March and she had beat me. She's also a black belt whereas I'm a brown belt, so I was anticipating that she'd beat me again," says Wright. "When we got back on stage, they announced me as the winner and I was ecstatic."
Wright, who's also the United Way of Chatham-Kent's annual fundraising campaign, was also greeted with a Welcome Home celebration yesterday with a double-decker "victory lap" throughout the community.