Paige Greco took gold in record-breaking fashion in the cycling C1-C3 class 3,000-metre individual pursuit, beating China’s Wang Xiaomei.
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Australian cyclist Paige Greco won the first gold at the Tokyo Paralympics 2020 on Wednesday. The Games which were postponed by almost a year due to COVID-19 pandemic got underway a day after the high-energy but poignant opening ceremony. Despite the year-long delay, the shadow of the coronavirus hanging over the event, records began falling almost immediately in both cycling and swimming as the competition heated up. Greco took gold in record-breaking fashion in the cycling C1-C3 class 3,000-metre individual pursuit, beating China’s Wang Xiaomei.
The 24-year-old smashed her own world record by eight seconds to qualify fastest from the heats. And then she lowered that time by another second and a half to 3min 50.815sec in the final just over two hours later to clinch the Paralympic title.
China’s Wang, who won the Silver medal had no answer to Greco’s power, and finished four seconds adrift the champion.
Meanwhile, in the wheelchair rugby pool stage, defending champion Australia suffered a shock defeat to Denmark (54-53). It was a huge setback to their hopes of becoming the first team to win the gold medal at three consecutive games
British swimmer Reece Dunn set a new Paralympic record on his debut in the men’s 100m butterfly S14 category. It was a flying start for the British swimmers in Tokyo as they booked seven final spots on the opening day of the competition.
The Plymouth Leander world-record holder powered his way into the Men’s S14 100m Butterfly final, qualifying quickest from the morning’s heats in 55.99.
It gave Dunn the honour of holding the Paralympic record as it is a new race being held at the Tokyo 2020 Games for the first time.
India’s campaign at Tokyo Paralympics started with Sonal Patel’s hard fought loss to Li Quian in the Table Tennis Class 3 group match. The Indian paddler came exceedingly close to pulling off an upset against Chinese paddler Li Qian who is ranked fourth in the world rankings. Sonal has delivered a few good results in recent times, which includes a silver medal finish in the 2018 Asian Para Games. The confidence reflected in her approach as the Indian paddler pulled off a fine start to proceedings, emerging victorious in a tight first game to register a 11-9 win.
However, the Chinese came back roaring in the second game, pulling off a 3-11 win in an encounter, that witnessed a top-notch performance from the paddler.
Sonal pulled off a fine turnaround and maintained her resolve in a marathon third game to seal a 17-15 win and record a 2-1 win lead. But the 2016 Rio Olympic silver medalist showed her mental strength to win the fourth game and then clinched the fifth game comfortably and thereby the match at 3-2.
In the other Table Tennis match of the day, Indian paddler Bhavina Patel lost her opening round Class 3 group match to World No.1 Ying Zhao.
