Rio passed the Paralympic Games baton to Tokyo on Sunday night – and Great Britain’s victorious athletes immediately set their sights on inspiring the next generation of talent for 2020.
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But the three medals only served as an aching reminder that Japan will walk away from Rio without a gold medal, the first at a Paralympics since the Tokyo Games in 1964. At the begining, many people feared that the Rio Paralympics would be a fiasco but some scintillating performances and stunning feats turned it into an unforgettable triumph of determination over disability.
Flags were lowered to half mast at the Paralympic village and Iran took a photo of Golbarnezhad on to the podium after winning their sitting volleyball gold medal on Sunday.
50 – Paul Blake, the son of a Star Wars bounty hunter, won Britain’s 50th gold medal of the Paralympics, with victory in the T36 400 metres.
But he was also honoured just hours after his race at the closing ceremony when he was elected to the athletes’ council of the International Paralympic Committee.
Referring to the political instability and deep recession weighing down Brazil as it put on South America’s first Olympics in August and then the Paralympics, he conceded that it had been “a mission of many doubts”.
Two national athletes broke a record.
BRITAIN’S Paralympians have done their country and themselves proud thanks to series of brilliant, world-beating performances in Rio, and they should be welcomed home with all the acclaim elite sports people deserve. Carlos Nuzman, head of the Rio Olympic organizing committee, said in a statement.
Kadeena Cox, a 25-year-old Rio medallist who won gold in both athletics and cycling, has carried flag bearer for the Paramlympics GB in the closing ceremony. The Fourth to tenth positions were taken by the US, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy and Poland.
After the tragic death Saturday of Para cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, there was some solace for Iran as the men’s sitting volleyball team won an emotional gold medal against defending champions Bosnia and Herzegovina.
By the end, officials said, they had sold 2.1 million tickets – fewer than London in 2012 but more than Beijing four years earlier.
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The Ukraine just edged ahead of the US for third place with 117 medals and 41 golds against the U.S.’s 115 medals and forty golds.
