China extends lead in Paralympics 2024 medals table after track success

China athletes parade during the Opening Ceremony for the Paralympics 2024, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

China began to exert its traditional dominance at the Paralympics 2024 in Paris on Friday, pulling ahead of second-placed Great Britain despite a double gold medal success for British swimmers.

The Chinese, who have topped the medal standings at every Paralympics since Athens in 2004, finished the second day of competition with 12 golds, a performance that included three golds on the first day of the athletics program.

Britain has six golds after Tully Kearney, who has cerebral palsy, and Maisie Summers-Newton both defended their titles from the Tokyo Paralympics three years ago.

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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.”

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Earlier, Zhou Xia won China’s first gold medal of the athletics events when she sprinted to the women’s T35 100m title, for competitors with impaired coordination, in a time of 13.58sec.

Di Dongdong added the men’s long jump title for athletes with visual impairment by smashing the world record with a 6.85m jump and Wen Xiaoyan added a gold in the T37 women’s 200m.

 Israeli celebration

Survivors of the Kibbutz Nir Yitzak that was attacked by Hamas on October 7 hold banners which read “Kibbutz Nir Yitzak 70 years” during the Paralympics 2024 men’s wheelchair singles tennis tournament first round match between Israel’s Adam Berdichevsky and Italy’s Luca Arca, at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, France, Friday Aug. 30, 2024. 35 survivors of the Kibbutz Nir Yitzak followed the tennis match of Adam Berdichevsky at Roland Garros Stadium. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

The wheelchair tennis tournament began at Roland Garros, the home of the French Open, under grey skies and morning 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 was 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 began their campaign for a fourth Paralympic title in five Games.

In front of an enthusiastic Stade de France crowd of around 45,000 in the evening session, Brazil’s Petrucio Ferreira dos Santos, 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.

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.

“I’m happy, lightning has struck for the third time at the Paralympic Games and I’m coming home with another medal,” Ferreira said.

“That’s three golds now at the Paralympics. It’s an emotion that’s hard to describe.”

His compatriot Julio Agripino dos Santos had earlier kicked off the athletics programme by winning the men’s T11 5,000m gold with a guide runner in a world record.