Tokyo (AFP)

As in Rio, table tennis player Fabien Lamirault won Monday in the final of the Class 2 tournament of the Tokyo Paralympic Games.

A fourth title for France which already equals Japan's total of 28 medals in 2016 thanks to a second podium from Alex Portal.

Reigning Paralympic champion, Fabien Lamirault defeated the Polish Rafal Czuper (3-2) in a remake of the Rio-2016 final.

"It's a big relief because I put enormous pressure on myself on these Games," blows the Frenchman.

"I was keen to win to become the first in my category to keep the title, it had never been done."

For his third Games, at 41, the native of Longjumeau therefore won a fifth Paralympic medal, the third individual.

Paraplegic since a car accident in 1997, he discovered table tennis in a rehabilitation center.

"There is a sixth medal to be fetched with, I hope, the same color", already projects Fabien Lamirault, in search of team gold (Class 1-2) of which he is also the defending champion.

As for the French table tennis team, it alone has a record of seven medals before the start of the team events, including two silver won by Léa Ferney and Matéo Bohéas, plus four bronze.

- Curse of fourth place -

Swimming was not to be outdone with a third podium and a second personal medal won by Alex Portal.

Frenchman Alex Portal during the final of the 400m freestyle S13 of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games at the Tokyo Aquatics Center on August 27, 2021. Behrouz MEHRI AFP

With the money taken from 200m medley (category SM13), the 19-year-old swimmer, a carrier of ocular albinism and therefore visually impaired from birth, climbs one step after his third place in the 400-meter freestyle on Friday.

For his first Games, he could even have three medals if he had not stayed at the foot of the podium for 1/100 on Wednesday in the 100-meter butterfly.

A curse of fourth place which seems to pursue the French swimmers since Laurent Chadart on 50m butterfly (S6 category) and Ugo Didier, on 100m backstroke (S9 category) after his silver medal in 400m freestyle, each missed the podium for a place.

In wheelchair tennis, flag-bearer Stéphane Houdet, like his doubles partner Nicolas Peifer, reached the quarter-finals without a hitch.

But they will have two mountains in front of them with respectively the N.1 and 2 world, the Japanese Shingo Kunieda and the Briton Alfie Hewett.

In blind football, the French team after a second defeat in two matches, this time against China (1-0) is doomed to sign a large victory against Brazil, which has won each edition of the Games since the introduction of the sport in 2004.

© 2021 AFP