China won 94 gold, 76 silver and 50 bronze medals at the Paris Paralympics and finished first on the table for the sixth Games in a row. The run goes back to Athens in 2004.
Great Britain took second with 49 golds, 45 fewer than China. The Chinese team also broke 29 world records, in swimming, athletics and table tennis among other sports, according to Yahoo News. CGTN counted 20 of those records in swimming, track and field, weightlifting and cycling and said China won gold in 12 sports.
It was China’s 11th Paralympics. The team sent 284 athletes to compete in 302 events across 19 sports.
Pool and track leaders
Swimming gave China its biggest haul: 54 medals, 22 of them gold. Jiang Yuyan, 19, won seven golds on her own. Guo Jincheng, 23, added four golds and two silvers in the pool.
Elsewhere, Li Yujie won China’s first taekwondo gold. The boccia team, at its fourth Paralympics, took two golds. Qu Zimo, also 23, won two in badminton, and China came home with a bronze in wheelchair tennis and its first medal in canoeing.
The veterans held up too. Cui Zhe won weightlifting gold for the first time in five Games. Feng Panfeng collected his 10th Paralympic gold in table tennis, and Yao Juan, competing for the seventh time, won the F64 shot put.
The wider Games
A record 169 delegations came to Paris, and about 4,400 athletes took part. Organizers sold 2.4 million of 2.5 million tickets.
The final day belonged to Morocco’s Fatima Ezzahra El Idrissi, who broke the women’s marathon world record with a time of 2 hours, 48 minutes and 36 seconds.
Zakia Khudaddu, born in Afghanistan, won the Paralympic Refugee Team’s first medal, a bronze in the women’s 47kg taekwondo. Ukraine nearly matched its Tokyo 2020 placement even though hundreds of its sports facilities have been destroyed or damaged in the war.
Paris also carried out a large restoration plan to speed up its accessibility work, as the organizers wanted the Games to set an example on inclusion for people with disabilities.
Sources
- China top Paralympics medal table with 94 gold, 76 silver & 50 bronze
- China finish top of Paralympic table for sixth consecutive time as Games wrap up in Paris
