Dame Sarah Storey won her 12th Paralympic gold medal on the opening day of the Rio Games.
The 38-year-old swimmer-turned-cyclist from Poynton surpassed former wheelchair racer Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson as the British female with the most Paralympic titles by winning the C5 three-kilometres individual pursuit in the velodrome.
Storey qualified in a world-record time of three minutes 31.394 seconds – more than 17 seconds quicker than Crystal Lane in qualifying.
She overtook her team-mate before the halfway point in the final to claim gold.
Lane, appearing in her second Paralympics, won her first medal with silver.
Storey won her first two Paralympic gold medals as a 14-year-old swimmer in Barcelona in 1992. She insisted a third successive individual pursuit title since switching to the bike prior to the Beijing Games in 2008 would not be a formality. But it was.
Storey’s class told in qualifying yesterday morning and she delivered with her seventh cycling gold medal at her seventh Games.
She said: “I’ve not thought about being the most decorated Paralympian until two days ago, Tanni’s still a hero for me.
“To go quicker than London after having my daughter Louisa is the icing on the cake.
“You can never underestimate anyone on the other side of the track. It’s amazing and I don’t think it will sink for a very long time.”
