Paralympics: Who to watch today
Derek Derenalagi, the British soldier injured in Afghanistan five years ago, makes his Paralympic debut today in a battle for discus gold.
Fiji-born Derenalagi, who has been involved in athletics for three years having previously been a keen rugby player, will compete in the discus final for the F57 and F58 classifications at 7pm on the first day of paralympic track and field.
Athletics will also see David Weir MBE (pictured left), possible the most famous member of the ParaGB squad, enter the stadium. He will compete in the first round of the 5,000m race for T54 athletes. The final will be on Sunday.
On the first day of athetics Aled Davies got ParaGB off to a good start, winning bronze in the F42/44 shot-put. The gold was won by Denmark’s Jackie Christiansen.
At 3:28pm Mark Colbourne will be competing in the C1 individual pursuit. This morning he qualified in a world-record breaking time, just as Sarah Storey did yesterday in her pursuit event. Storey went on to claim gold – ParaGB’s first gold of the Games.
He follows Aileen McGlynn, who won silver this morning in the B 1km time-trial. At 2pm Jody Cundy and Jon-Allan Butterworth are hot medal hopefuls in the C4-C5 1km time-trial, both being world champions in their classifications this year.
ParaGB athletes could potentially win medals in 20 events tomorrow, with the Aquatics centre likely to play a prominent role. Yesterday saw the first medals for ParaGB in the swimming events.
For a full schedule of tomorrow’s events visit the Channel 4 Paralympics website.
