Australian cyclist Paige Greco became the first Tokyo 2020 Paralympic gold medalist after winning the women’s 3,000m individual pursuit at the Izu Velodrome.
The 24-year-old even set a world record time of 3 minutes, 50.815 seconds. The Australian sped along with an average speed of 46.791 to prevail ahead of Chinese Wang Xiaomei and German Denise Schlinder, who came in second and third, respectively.
Greco is a relative newcomer to para track cycling, first competing internationally at the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships Apeldoorn in 2019, making her success all the more remarkable. She commented on her rise, saying: “Yeah, I’m fairly new to it. 2019 was my first international competitions, so it’s been a pretty awesome few years. I’m loving every bit of it.
“I’ve been working really hard. Before cycling I did athletics and that built a really good foundation of strength and my ability of how to race and how to pace myself on race day,” she explained.
Schlinder was the first medal of the Games, with bronze being recorded just beforehand. She was very happy with her time having broken her personal best, saying: “To do a 3.55 was just tremendously amazing. To get six seconds faster than my personal best before, so I was relieved everything followed for me.
“It felt like a gold medal and I’m super-happy with the bronze. It’s just amazing for me.”