Paris 2024 Paralympics day eight: Masters doubles up; athletics, tennis and more – live | Paris Paralympic Games 2024

A huge ovation and frantic flag waving follows Adolphe’s introduction to the crowd. This T11 category is for athletes with little or no vision. Adolphe is a talented man; he’s a hip hop artist as well as an athlete and was also signed up by Louis Vuitton for a Games ad campaign along with Leon Marchand. But anyway, to the action. They’re off .. and there’s barely anything between them until the finish line … my, that was close. Greece’s Athanasios Ghavelas just takes gold in a season’s best of 11.02sec. Adolphe is three hundredths of a second back and wins silver, with China’s Di Dongdong taking bronze.

Hewett isn’t messing around in his men’s tennis semi-final. He’s dominated Spain’s Martin de la Puente, who appears to be struggling with injury, and is a game away from victory, serving for the match at 6-2, 5-0. At 15-all, Channel 4 decides to switch to the swimming … so I have no idea how Hewett finishes the job, but finish the job he swiftly does, with a 6-2, 6-0 rout. It means the Brit is guaranteed at least a silver medal. But it’s not the silver he wants, of course. He wants that elusive gold.

The finals keep on coming, with the men’s SM9 200m individual medley. La Defense Arena is almost making as much noise as it did for Leon Marchand during the Olympics, with home hopes Hector Denayer and Ugo Didier both racing for France … the crowd are screaming every time the swimmers raise their heads on the breaststroke leg, but the duo can’t keep up with Australia’s Timothy Hodge, who surges in front to take gold in 2min 13.31sec, 2.67 seconds ahead of Didier in second and 4.03 seconds ahead of Denayer in third. Didier and Denayer are high-fiving each other after their French two-three. And for the second successive race in the pool we’ve got a new Paralympic record.

Tanya Aldred

Table tennis is the game of the youth club and the hostel, the campsite and the school gym, the park and the prison. It is also played by elite athletes with rubber wrists and quicksilver reflexes, like 14-year-old British schoolgirl Bly Twomey. (Though, it turns out, elite athletes or not, they still have to crawl under the table to pick up errant balls.)

Twomey, the fourth seed, already had a bronze medal, with Fliss Pickard in the WD14 doubles last Thursday, when she walked out for her WS7 singles semi-final against the seventh seed, Turkey’s Kübra Korkut on Thursday.

A curtain of light brown hair hanging round her face, Twomey charged into an early two-set lead, nimble and dynamic. But Korkut found her mojo and took the next three sets on the trot in a 21-minute burst to win 9-11, 7-11, 11-6, 11-5, 11-5.

Twomey would have to settle for another bronze. “It’s an amazing experience,” she said. “It gives me a lot of hope to know I’m the same level as them.”

There was a huge contingent from the Brighton Table Tennis club to support their home players, Twomey and Will Bayley – formerly of Strictly Come Dancing and a silver medallist at Tokyo – who plays in the MS7 semi-finals on Friday. “We love you Bly, we do,” they chanted, bringing a touch of the football stadium to the South Paris Arena.

The director of the club, Tim Holtam, was watching with 35 members and another 100 were due to arrive on Thursday afternoon, many of them children in foster care and children who have never left the country before, able to come because of funding. “It’s an amazing community,” he said. “And we’re trying to put a silver lining on it. We didn’t want her to win because we want to extend the party to LA in four years.”

Twomey first went to the club at Easter 2021, to a multi-sport camp run thanks to the Holiday Activities and Food programme inspired by Marcus Rashford. “She picked up a bat and it was perfect timing as Will was at the club full time after Tokyo. He has guided her and showed her how to play,” said Holtam.

You can read the rest here:

But here comes Rivard, who pulls away from Truwit before the final turn. Truwit is giving chase … but there’s too much for the American to do. Rivard makes is a hat-trick of S10 400m freestyle titles, having won gold in Rio and Tokyo too, with a time of 4min 29.20sec. Truwit has to settle for silver and an American record, while Italy’s Bianka Pap wins bronze. Rogers finishes fifth in a time of 4:41.50.

The great Egyptian Rehab Ahmed has won the women’s up to 55kg powerlifting final with a lift of 121kg. It means the world champion is now the Paralympic champion. GB’s Charlotte McGuinness, who was distraught after judged disqualified her first attempt because of the position of her body, finishes fourth with a lift of 105kg.

Unfortunately there’s no time to reflect on GB’s victory, because at La Defense Arena a stream of swimming finals – 13 no less – is getting under way with the 13-year-old Iona Winnifrith, the youngest member of the GB team, racing in the SB7 100m breaststroke. The teenager has a strong chance of a medal … but is in third in the early stages … Mariia Pavlova leads at the turn and takes the win by breaking her own world record with a time of 1min 26.09sec … with Winnifrith sealing silver in a lifetime best of 1:29.69!

After the tightest of first halves, which GB edged 28-24, they’ve dominated the second half to complete a 71-43 victory over Germany. Up next on Saturday: the USA or Canada, who face off later. It’s GB’s first chance to go for gold since Atlanta 1996, having won bronze at the past two Games.