2016 RIO PARALYMPIC GAMES
- Wednesday, September 7 – Sunday, September 18, 2016
- Swimming: Thursday, September 8 – Saturday, September 17, 2016
- Olympic Aquatics Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Prelims 9:30 AM / Finals 5:30 PM (local time)
- IPC World Records
- Live stream links: NBC / IPC
- Schedule/Results
It’s been a banner week for the Chinese Paralympic swim team, which leads the medal tables by a wide margin in Rio. Tuesday may have been the highest point yet, with 4 of 5 total world records in the finals session set by Chinese athletes.
The first two records came back-to-back in the SB11 100 breaststrokes.
In the men’s final, Yang Bozun bettered his own world record, going 1:10.08 and winning by about a second and a half. He just snuck under his old record of 1:10.11, which was set at the last Paralympics in London in 2012.
One event later, it was Zhang Xiatong who etched her name into the world record books with a win in the women’s event. Her 1:23.02 knocked down the former world record of 1:24.63 set by Lisette Bruinsma of the Netherlands earlier this year.
In the men’s 100 back S8, Zhou Cong picked up gold and a new world record, blasting a 1:02.90. The old record of 1:03.32 had stood since 2013, when it was set by Russia’s Konstantin Lisenkov.
The biggest world record smash came in the final Chinese win. Huang Wenpan crushed a 39.24 in the men’s S3 50 free, becoming the first S3 man ever under 42, 41 and 40 seconds. The old record was a 42.60 set way back at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing by Dmytro Vynohradets of the Ukraine.