The record for women’s power lifting – previously at 133kg – was beaten by Nigeria’s Lucy Ejike with a massive 142kg lift that earned her a third Paralympic gold medal.
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Simmonds relinquished the S6 400 metres freestyle title she first won in Beijing aged 13 and won again four years ago.
But Newham-born Marren still has the 100m backstroke to contest on Friday, as well as the 4x100m freestyle and medley relays for Great Britain. Through its sixth day, the Rio Paralympics have seen 132 world records fall, and 214 Paralympic records.
“I’m positively surprised by this”, said Fumis. I’m quite pleased with that.
And Robinson, 15, of Northampton, who is more used to competing at shorter distances, is not putting too much pressure on herself for the longer race.
Rivard is taking dead aim at a third medal in Rio de Janeiro.
“We’ve got full venues, the athletes are loving it and the performance levels are what we expected”, Spence said.
“With it being my first games you have to accept there will be some nerves and anxiety, but once you have got into the actual environment – I went through my routine and did my warm-up and checked the chair – I settled down”.
“I got out at the end with a massive smile on my face, it was insane, so hopefully I will swim faster tonight and do a nice time, we’ll see what happens”.
Rick Hoskins, who coaches both Andy and Dan at Stockport Wheelchair Racing, said: “It was always going to be close between the boys and what a race it turned out to be”. “I had a bad touch to the wall and I was not almost fast enough”. Matt Wylie of Sunderland made an impression on his Paralympic debut to take gold in the S9 50m Freestyle.
He said: “It wasn’t the ideal swim”.
Asked why she still rides under the SA flag, Philippa comments, “It is sometimes very hard, I have had numerous countries approach me to ask me to ride for them and yes on a lot of levels, especially on a financial level, it would make my life so much easier, but at the end of the day when that South African flag goes up and you hear your national anthem being played – you can’t beat it”. And just the crowd.
Charlottetown’s Amy Burk scored all six Canadian goals in a 6-0 win over Australia on the women’s side. “I tell you what, for us Gold Circle was a godsend because Shani & Tammy came over to us to train for 3 months and they literally did it on goodwill because we didn’t have sponsors then. It was a good race”.
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“I’ve worked a lot on my dive and the first 15m, that’s the part I was missing out on, I believe, so I think that went well”.
