Tokyo
US wheelchair racing legend Tatyana McFadden won her 18th Paralympic medal on Saturday, while elsewhere at the Tokyo Games charismatic Italian fencer Beatrice “Bebe” Vio attempted to defend her title.
On Day 4 of the competition, a total of 54 gold medals were up for grabs across nine different sports, including 17 athletics finals at the Olympic Stadium.
McFadden took bronze in the women’s T54 5,000m to extend her streak of finishing on the podium in every Paralympic race she has entered since 2008.
But she said just competing in Tokyo was a victory in itself, having been diagnosed with a blood-clotting disorder in 2017 that took almost two years to recover from.
“I’m on cloud nine,” said the 32-year-old, who was born in Russia and raised in an orphanage until she was adopted at the age of six.
“I was in a really dark spot because it took me 20 months to recover, and everyone was getting better in those 20 months.”
McFadden added that it was “quite amazing” that she took the bronze behind US team-mate Susannah Scaroni, who won gold.
Away from the track, Italian force of nature Vio, one of the world’s most recognisable Paralympians, began the defence of her wheelchair fencing individual foil title from the 2016 Rio Games.
Vio, who had both forearms and legs amputated when she contracted meningitis as an 11-year-old, won all her morning pool bouts to book her place in the quarter-finals.—APP
