Britain’s athletes had an intoxicating Sunday in Paris, collecting 12 gold medals, the most successful single day for ParalympicGB this century. It was, from the moment Benjamin Pritchard raced to victory at Stade Nautique de Vaires-sur-Marne in the morning’s PR1 men’s sculls, to the moment teenager Olivia Newman-Baronius touched the side of the pool in the final leg of the mixed 4x 100m S14 relay, just after 8.30pm, a heady gold rush, beating the nine collected on the most bumper days in Rio and Beijing.
It was fitting that one of those golds should go to Hannah Cockroft, who has been the face of Paralympic sports in the UK since she crossed the line in her wheelchair on the first night of athletics in 2012, her face stamped all over the London Games. On Sunday night, after she won her fourth consecutive T34 100m title and her eighth Paralympic gold, at an electric Stade de France, she was still trying to take it all in.
