Cyclist takes top spot as sprinter edged out in 100m dash
AUSTRALIA has won two more medals at the Tokyo Paralympics – lifting the team total to 16 after just two and a half days of competition.
Amanda Reid broke her own world record to win gold in track cycling before boom sprinter Isis Holt won a silver medal in the 100m dash despite breaking her world record.
Holt, who only turned 20 last month, flashed down the track from the middle lane to cross the line in 13.13 seconds – destroying the previous world record of 13.49 she set at the 2017 world championships in London.
But her nemesis, China’s Xia Zhou, finished even faster, stopping the clock at 13.00 to defend the title she won in Rio in 2016, when she also edged out the Aussie for the gold.
Holt has already won four world titles, in 100m and 200m in the T35 class, which includes athletes with cerebral palsy, as well as a Commonwealth Games title from the Gold Coast in 2018.
She is still chasing Paralympic gold after winning two silvers and a bronze in Rio and now another silver in Tokyo, with the 200m still to come.
Reid meanwhile stormed to victory in the women’s C1-C3 500m time trial at the Izu Velodrome.
Her official time, which is adjusted because she is classified as a C2 competitor, was 35.581 seconds, destroying her previous world record of 38.918, which she set in Brisbane last year.
Reid is the third Australian track cyclist to win gold in Tokyo.
There’s still another day of track cycling to go before the road cycling starts next week, where the Aussies could be even more dominant.
Reid is just the fifth Indigenous Australian to win gold at the Paralympics.