World recordholder Danielle Aitchison has cruised into her T36 200 metres final, smashing the Paralympics record in the process at Paris.
The Kiwi speedster set the global mark, as she captured the world title at Kobe earlier this year and looked a clear favourite for Paralympics gold, as she jogged home to win the second of two heats in her event at Stade de France.
Aitchison, 23, who was born with cerebral palsy and 80-90% hearing loss, was New Zealand's youngest medallist at Tokyo 2020, when she finished second behind Chinese Yiting Shi over the longer sprint. She has now broken her rival’s Games record with 28.09s, still more than half a second slower than the world standard.
Shi won the other heat in 28.87s and will again present the biggest challenge in the final at 10.23pm Sunday (NZ time).
The Kiwi speedster is already world recordholder. (Source: TVNZ)
Elsewhere, it was a day of near misses for New Zealand, with a couple of strong medal contenders surprisingly missing their finals.
Defending champion Neiufi Tupou was a casualty of the women’s S8 10m backstroke heats, finishing fifth in the second of two races and falling six-tenths of a second outside the top-eight cutoff for the final.
Gold was eventually won by Brit Alice Tai in Paralympics record time, adding to her two world titles and Commonwealth Games gold.
Still suffering the effects of a training accident in Switzerland last month, cyclist Devon Briggs again fell short of the men’s C1-3 kilo time trial final at the velodrome, an event where he is current world champion for his category.
Briggs clocked 1m 08.505s, but was more than a second outside the cut on corrected time, after missing the individual pursuit bronze-medal ride-off by less than one-tenth of a second the previous day.
"Definitely a bit gutted with how the kilo went and yesterday, but definitely two races I can be proud of," reflected Briggs. "I didn't quite know how it would go with my sacrum under load.
"I got out of the gate, and the first pedal stroke didn't feel good or right. I knew it would be a painful ride from there, I tried to get on top of the gear and push through it, but just couldn't quite get there."
Badminton player Wojtek Czyzk completed his debut Paralympics campaign with a third SL3 singles defeat in group play, bowing to Japanese Daisuke Fujihara 21-8 21-12, while shooter Neelam O’Neill also missed the final of the women’s SH1` 10m air pistol, finishing 10th in qualifying.
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