10am Badminton begins
Incredibly, this far into the Paralympics there are still sports having their first day and today badminton takes a bow. Indeed, it is a new sport making its overall Paralympics debut. There are 22 group stage matches and 14 different competitions to be won. The majority of the finals are on Saturday.
10.15am Can basketballers rebound?
A devastated British women’s wheelchair basketball team were left in tears yesterday after they lost their quarter-final 47-33 to China. Their male counterparts face Canada for a semi-final berth. ParalympicsGB start as favourites. They won the bronze in Rio and won four of their five group games.
11am Blade Jumper takes off
One of the biggest names at the Games will be in action this morning with the “Blade Jumper” Markus Rehm competing in the men’s T64 long jump. Gold is a certainty but the German also has designs on breaking his own world record of 8.62m. On the track ParalympicsGB’s Sammi Kinghorn, after narrowly missing out on a medal in the 800m, should be in action in the T53 100m final.
1.30am Storey sets sights on history
All the British cyclists in Tokyo have won at least one medal. And 43-year-old Sarah Storey will go for a record career 17th gold in the first race of the day in the women’s C4-5 road race. If she succeeds she will stand alone as Great Britain’s most successful Paralympian. Benjamin Watson goes in the men’s C1-C3 race fresh from winning gold in the men’s C3 time trial, while Finlay Graham and Jaco van Gass are also in action.
2am Taekwondo time
Taekwondo has been part of the Olympic medal programme since the 2000 Games in Sydney and was a hit for the BBC this year aided by the analysis of Lutalo Muhammad. It makes its first appearance at a Paralympics tomorrow and athletes will compete in six Kyorugi contests for athletes with upper limb impairments. Britain’s Amy Truesdale won the K44 +58kg world championship in 2017 and fights on Saturday. Beth Munro, who took up the sport in 2019, fights a day earlier. “I didn’t know there was a Para taekwondo team,” she said. “If you get offered a bucket list option of potentially winning a Paralympic medal, you take it.”
