
Swimmer Keiichi Kimura earned a silver medal in the men's 100-meter breaststroke SB11, a class for the visually impaired, at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on Wednesday.
This was Kimura's first medal at the Tokyo Games. He already had six other medals -- three silver and three bronze -- from his previous Paralympic appearances.
Kimura, 30, placed third in the preliminaries earlier in the day. He swam the final in 1 minute 11.78 seconds, only 0.56 seconds behind the Netherlands' Rogier Dorsman, who won the race in 1:11.22. China's Yang Bozun took the bronze with a time of 1:12.62.
Kimura lost his vision at age 2 from a congenital illness, and started swimming when he was a fourth-grader at an elementary school for the blind in Shiga Prefecture. He made his Paralympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Games, but did not win a medal.
At the 2012 London Paralympics, he took a silver and a bronze, then went on to secure four more medals -- two silver and two bronze -- at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
Kimura finished 5th in the men's SM11 200-meter individual medley on Monday, and will try for his first Paralympic gold in the men's S11 100-meter butterfly on Friday.
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