Golden hue over Kiwi Para-Swimming team in Rio

It proved a double golden day for the New Zealand Para-Swimming team on day five of action at Rio.

Swimming superstar Sophie Pascoe scored her ninth Paralympics gold medal, the most by any New Zealander, while the remarkable Cameron Leslie made it three gold medals in three Paralympics with a stunning world record.

Added to this was the effort of 17-year-old Waikato Para-Swimmer Nikita Howarth who won a bronze medal to seal a superb day in the pool.

Northland’s Leslie, one of the most inspiring of sporting characters, produced a thoroughly dominant performance.

He smashed his world record set at London of 2:25.98 with a brilliant solo swim. He pushed clear in the second half of the backstroke and from there stamped his class on the field to win in 2:23:12, knocking nearly three seconds off his previous world mark. Leslie finished ahead of Zhipeng Jin (China) and Jonas Larsen (Denmark).

It also marks his third straight Paralympic gold medal in his specialist individual medley S11, and on each occasion he has established a world record.

Leslie, 26, gave up his fulltime career as a journalist last year to dedicate himself fulltime to his Rio campaign, re-uniting with his longtime coach Simon Mayne.

“I certainly felt a mixture of a lot of pain out there tonight, but I just had to get through the motions and remember the process. It is so easy for the wheels to fall off, if you focus on the pain," Leslie said.

"We (Cameron and coach Simon Mayne) set a very challenging target time coming into this competition and we knew if we hit that time a gold medal would be on. I am so glad we did set such a challenging one because Jin was pretty close behind in the end.  I had no idea he was there, I was just focussed on making sure I did the things I could control, right.”

The script is not yet complete for the truly great Pascoe. Suffice to say her emphatic gold medal in the 100m butterfly S10 was her ninth in Paralympic competition, which is one from that the previous best of eight held by the late Eve Rimmer.

Pascoe has also drawn level with Rimmer with 14 Paralympic records, with another gold medal beckoning tomorrow in the pool at Rio as the Christchurch star looks to defend the third of her finals won in London, the 100m freestyle.

Pascoe set a Paralympic Record of 1:02.65 and just missed breaking her own World Record of 1:02.60 set earlier in 2016. She annihilated Yi Chen (China) and Oliwia Jablonska (Poland) by more than 4 and 5 seconds respectively.

“I have only just learnt tonight that I have won the most gold medals of any New Zealand Paralympian and that hasn’t quite sunk in yet," Pascoe said. "But I just go out there and give it everything.

"I challenge myself every day to take on the biggest challenge of all, taking on the world in the pool. That is what I did tonight. Now it is about focussing on the next one, the 100m Freestyle tomorrow.”

Howarth, who was the youngest ever Paralympian at 13 years at London, took out the bronze medal in the 50m butterfly S7.

The Cambridge swimmer qualified fastest in the heats in 35.58s, which equaled her previous best. Great Britain’s Susannah Rodgers, the second fastest qualifier, set a PB 35.07s to win the final from Cortney Jordan (USA) with Howarth third in 35.97, a fraction slower than her heat swim.

Meanwhile Mary Fisher finished sixth in the final of the 50m freestyle S11 in 31.80, win by China’s Guizhi Li in a world record 30.73.

Earlier in the day 15-year-old Tupou Neiufi from Auckland, the youngest in the team, made her Paralympics debut, finishing 22nd fastest in the women’s 100m freestyle S9 in 1:11.21.

Sixteen-year-old Hamish McLean from Wanaka missed out on a place in the final of the men’s 200m individual medley SM6 by just 17/100ths of a second. He clocked 2:59.81 in his heat which was a fraction outside his previous best.

Tomorrow sees four New Zealanders in the pool with Pascoe in the 100m freestyle, Howarth in the 200m individual medley, McLean in the 400m freestyle and Neiufi in the 50m freestyle.

The Paralympics swimming action is live on Duke Channel.

CAPTION: Cameron Leslie. Credit BW Media.

Rio 2016 Paralympic