Western Daily Press (Saturday)
100-up for Team GB at the Games
GREAT Britain won three more golds as they passed the 100-medal mark on day ten of the Tokyo Games.
Top of the podium were canoeist Emma Wiggs and athletes Jonathan Broom-Edwards and Owen Miller.
Wiggs was victorious in the VL2 200 metres event – the first time that the Va’a boat, which is an outrigger canoe with a support float and is used with a single-bladed paddle – has been raced at the Paralympics.
High jump world champion Broom-Edwards, meanwhile, a silver medallist in Rio, went one better this time in the T64 category by clearing 2.10m with his second attempt after he needed three efforts at 2.07m.
Miller, making his Paralympic debut, put in a strong final lap to win the T20 1,500m in three minutes 54.57 seconds, ahead of Russian Alexander Rabotnitskii.
Richard Whitehead, however, had to settle for silver in his bid to win a third 200m title in row, losing out to South African 19-year-old Ntando Mahlangu in the T61 category.
Defending champion Hollie Arnold could only take bronze in the F46 javelin.
Arnold led going into the final round with 39.05m, but was overhauled by both world record holder Hollie Robinson, from New Zealand, (40.99m) and Dutchwoman Noelle Roorda (40.06m), who took gold and silver respectively.
Beth Munro made history with Britain’s first taekwondo medal at the Paralympics with silver in the -58kg event. The 28-year-old, from Liverpool, who only took up the sport in late 2019, lost 32-14 to Denmark’s Lisa Gjessing, the fourtime world champion.
GB’s men’s wheelchair basketball team will play Spain for bronze on Sunday after a 79-68 loss to hosts Japan in the semi-finals. It is the sixth Games in a row that GB have been in the third and fourth play-off.
On the final day of the swimming programme there was heartbreak for Britain’s Stephen Clegg, who was beaten to gold by 0.06 seconds in the final of the S12 100m butterfly.
Clegg, the world record holder, who had won two bronzes earlier in the Games, lost out to Raman Salei of Azerbaijan.
“I’m going to be lying if I say I’m not gutted with that,” he said after clocking 57.87 secs. “I definitely had a different colour in mind coming into this.”
There was also silver for wheelchair tennis pair Gordon Reid and Alfie Hewett in the men’s doubles; the tandem pair of Sophie Unwin and her pilot Jenny Holl in the women’s B road race; and for the class 6-7 table tennis team of Will Bayley and Paul Karabardak.
The universal relay team of Libby Clegg and her guide Chris Clarke, Jonnie Peacock, Ali Smith and Nathan Maguire were upgraded to silver from bronze after China were disqualified. The USA took the gold.
There were bronzes for Jordanne Whiley in wheelchair tennis singles, Jeanette Chippington and Rob Oliver in Para-canoe and athlete Hannah Taunton.
The 2020 Tokyo Paralympics conclude over the weekend.