Great Britain’s Para-swimmers won three golds among five medals in a sensational 40-minute spell at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games while Amy Truesdale and Matt Bush claimed Para-taekwondo titles on day three.
Stephen Clegg, William Ellard and then Alice Tai each topped the podium at La Defense Arena – with Clegg and Ellard doing so with world-record performances.
Truesdale won women’s K44 +65kg gold in dramatic circumstances, avoiding disqualification after a kick inadvertently caught Uzbekistan’s Guljonoy Naimova in the face and left her opponent unable to continue.
Bush then added ParalympicsGB’s fifth gold of the day – and 11th of the Games – to take the team’s medal total to 25.
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Further medals were won in the pool by Poppy Maskill, who won silver ahead of bronze medal-winning team-mate Louise Fiddes.
There was also silver for Archie Atkinson at the velodrome, although the 20-year-old world record holder suffered gold-medal heartbreak as he fell just two laps from clinching a dominant victory in the men’s C4 4,000m individual pursuit.
Para-archer Jodie Grinham, who is seven months pregnant, beat compatriot and defending champion Phoebe Paterson Pine in the women’s individual compound bronze medal match.
Bronze was also secured by table tennis players Paul Karabardak and Billy Shilton in the men’s doubles MD14.
Great Britain’s swimmers put on a superb display for their supporters inside La Defense Arena on Saturday as golds were captured and records tumbled in a frantic 40-minute medal rush.
That began when Tokyo bronze medallist Clegg, 28, broke a 12-year world record in winning the men’s S12 100m backstroke final, finishing ahead of Azerbaijan’s Raman Salei and Ukraine’s Yaroslav Denysenko in 59.02 seconds to win his first Paralympic title.
Teenager Ellard celebrated his second medal of the Games in style with a S14 200m freestyle world record in one minute 51.30 secs, the 18-year-old beating Canada’s Nicholas Bennett and Australia’s Jack Ireland to add to his men’s S14 100m butterfly silver.
Seven-time world champion Tai, 25, then earned her first individual Paralympic gold with a dominant display in the women’s S8 100m backstroke, taking victory by six seconds to set a Paralympic record of 1:09.06.
Tai, who finished ahead of Neutral Paralympic Athlete Viktoriia Ishchiulova and China’s Zheng Tingting, missed the Tokyo Games because of injury and later chose to have her leg amputated.
Maskill claimed her second medal of the Games, the 19-year-old adding women’s S14 200m freestyle silver to her S14 100m butterfly gold, as team-mate Fiddes also made the podium in third – but Olivia Newman-Baronius missed out in fourth.
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