Paralympic swimming gold rush brings Britain level with China / Photo: FRANCK FIFE - AFP
Paralympic swimming gold rush brings Britain level with China
Great Britain's swimmers pulled off a gold medal heist at the Paralympics in Paris on Friday to draw level with powerhouse China in the overall medals table.
There were also a host of medals on offer on the first day of the track and field at the Stade de France while the wheelchair tennis players commenced battle at Roland Garros on day two of competition.
Tully Kearney and Maisie Summers-Newton stormed to gold medals for Britain in the pool, both defending their titles from the Tokyo Paralympics three years ago.
Kearney won the women's 100m freestyle in the S5 category while Summers-Newton, who was born with achondroplasia, a condition that affects bone development, came home first in the women's 200m individual medley SM6.
"I was really nervous, it's something that's come from Tokyo," Summers-Newton, a qualified primary school teacher, told reporters.
"There's a lot of pressure being Paralympic champion."
Hong Yang added a third swimming medal of the Games for China as he won the 200m individual medley SM6.
Earlier, Zhou Xia won China's first gold medal of the athletics events when she sprinted to the women's T35 100m title, for people with impaired coordination, in a time of 13.58sec.
- Israeli celebration -
At Roland Garros, the home of the French Open, despite grey morning skies and rain, a large crowd, including a sizeable Israeli contingent, filed into the Suzanne Lenglen court to support singles player Adam Berdichevsky against Italy's Luca Arca.
After clinching a 6-2, 7-5 victory, Berdichevsky took an Israeli flag from his wife and three children and jogged around the court waving it.
During the October 7 attack on Israel, Berdichevsky, his wife and three children hid in their house for several hours as Hamas fighters entered Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, just two miles from Gaza.
The family were eventually evacuated to a safe house.
He said the experience had given him a new perspective on life.
"I think it helps mentally because since then for me nothing is really important. If I lose, I lose. If I win, I win."
Giant Iranian sitting volleyball legend Morteza Mehrzad, who stands 8ft 1in (2.46m) tall, helped his country to a comfortable 3-0 win against Ukraine as they aim for a fourth Paralympic title out of the last five Games.
In front of an enthusiastic Stade de France crowd of around 45,000, Brazil's Petrucia Ferreira dos Santos, known as the fastest Paralympian in the world, won a third consecutive 100m title in the T47 class in a time of 10.68sec despite a track dotted with puddles after heavy rain.
Ferreira, who at the age of two lost his left arm below the elbow in an accident with a grinding machine, won gold medals in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 and smashed the para-world record in 2022 when he posted a time of 10.29sec.
His gold medal was Brazil's fourth of these Games.
Ch.McDonald--EWJ
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