Tokyo Paralympics – Day 2: gold rush for ParalympicsGB

It was a fantastic day for ParalympicsGB in Tokyo as the team took five golds across four sports. World records were broken and Sir Lee Pearson won his 12^th Paralympic gold after an impressive show in the dressage.

Pearson, who was born with arthrogryposis and made his debut at Sydney 2000, scored a comprehensive triumph in the Grade II individual dressage on the back of a new partner, Breezer. He finished with 76.265%, and his nearest rival, the Austrian Pepo Puch, finished on 73.441%. Pearson’s compatriot, Georgia Wilson, came third on her debut with 72.765%. He now sits at third in the British all-time medal list, and if he medals in both the team dressage and individual freestyle test, he could finish Tokyo 2020 with more golds on his own than Germany and the US (the second and third most successful countries in Paralympic equestrian sport) do between them.

At the Izu Velodrome, Afghanistan veteran Jaco van Gass beat compatriot Fin Graham in the men’s C3 3,000m individual pursuit gold medal race. Van Gass, who lost his left arm in a Taliban grenade attack in 2009, broke the world record during qualifying with a time of 3:17.593, shortly after Graham set a new world record-time of 3:19.780 I his own qualifying race. In the gold-medal race, van Gass beat his teammate by just over a second. It was a successful day for ParalympicsGB in the velodrome – Jody Cundy won silver in the men’s C4-5 time trial, while Aileen McGlynn and her pilot Helen Scott won silver in the women’s B time trial.

In the pool, both Tully Kearney and Maisie Summers-Newton both set world records on their way to the gold. Summers-Newton came from behind after the first two legs of the SM6 women’s 200m individual medley – she took the lead on the breaststroke leg and claimed the gold in 2:56.68, ahead of Ukraine’s Yelyzaveta Mereshko. Ellie Simmonds, an icon of the GB Paralympics, came fifth. On the back of her silver yesterday in the butterfly, Kearney won the S5 women’s 100m freestyle gold with a world-record time of 1:14.39, around three seconds ahead of her nearest rival, China’s Li Zhang.

In the wheelchair fencing, Piers Gulliver stormed to victory in the epee A final. In the last four, Gulliver faced China’s Sun Gang, who defeated him in the final at Rio 2016, before defeating the RPC’s Maxim Shaburov 15-9 in the decider. In the men’s epee B, GB’s Dimitra Coutya won bronze, while the RPC’s Alexander Kuzyokov won the gold.

GB have reached the semi-finals of the wheelchair rugby after a 60-37 win over New Zealand – they will face the USA tomorrow. The men’s wheelchair basketball team defeated Algeria 70-43, but the women’s team suffered their second defeat in a row after a 54-48 loss to hosts Japan. Will Bailey advanced to the quarter-finals of the class 7 table tennis, but powerlifter Zoe Newson missed out on a medal with a fourth-place finish in the -41kg event. The US TikTok star Anastasia Pagonis, who posts videos challenging preconceptions about blindness, set a new world record to win gold in the S11 400m freestyle, while Japan won their first gold of the Games with Takayuki Suzuki’s win in the S4 100m freestyle.

Medal table:

1. China

Gold (8), Silver (5), Bronze (10), Total (23)

2. Great Britain

Gold (6), Silver (8), Bronze (3), Total (17)

3. Russian Paralympic Committee

Gold (6), Silver (5), Bronze (6), Total (17)

4. Australia

Gold (6), Silver (2), Bronze (6), Total (14)

5. The Netherlands

Gold (5), Silver (3), Bronze (1), Total (9)