Clean sweep for China’s Fencers, hosts Japan get off the mark, Singapore’s swimming sensation defends her Rio Gold medal
China’s Fencers showed that they mean business when they won all four of the Gold medals on offer in the Wheelchair Fencing competition at the Makahuri Messe on the opening day of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
Hopes were high for the Chinese when they qualified for all four Gold medal bouts and two of the Bronze medal bouts in the Sabre Individual, men’s and women’s category A and B disciplines. In a dominant display, they won all six bouts, improving hugely on their Rio tally of one bronze in the Sabre events. They will be hoping that this form continues into Day 2 of Wheelchair Fencing, where the Men’s and Women’s Épée Individual events will be contested. In Rio 2016, China won three of the four gold medals on offer and one silver and a bronze.
Elsewhere, China picked up a gold medal in the pool when Li ZHANG won the Women’s 200m Freestyle S5 event in a tight race where she edged out GBR’s Tully Kearney by just 0.12 second. This result put China into second place on the overall medal table behind Australia, although level with them on Gold medals, Australia have picked up one more medal overall.
Hosts Japan also got on the scoresheet, picking up two medals at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre where Takayuki SUZUKI won bronze in the men’s 50m Breaststroke SB3 final and YAMADA Miyuki won silver in the Women’s 100m Backstroke S2 final. She was beaten by YIP Pin Xiu from Singapore who successfully defended the title she won in Rio. The final medal for an Asian nation was also in the pool by Uzbekistan’s Islam ASLANOV in the Men’s 100m Butterfly S13m the event which he won Gold in at the Indonesia 2018 Asia Para Games.
The medal tally at the end of Day 1 for Asian Nations looks like this (rank is the position on the overall medal table):
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| 2 | China | 5 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| 9 | Singapore | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 15 | Japan | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 22 | Uzbekistan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Elsewhere in the team sports, both China and Japan’s women’s basketball teams won their first group games (CHN 74 v 25 ALG, JPN 73 v 47 AUS) but the Republic of Korea’s men lost out to Spain (ESP 65 v 53 KOR). In Wheelchair Rugby, the hosts and reigning world champions Japan beat France in a tough match that ended JPN 53 v 51 FRA. In Goalball, Japan’s women lost to Turkey (TUR 7 v 1 JPN).
On day 2, there are more Wheelchair Fencing, Swimming, Track Cycling medals up for grabs along with Powerlifting and Equestrian.
