Potapova's bronze tradition, Shabalina's second gold and the 24th medal of the ex-Russian woman: what will be remembered for the 3rd day of the Paralympics

Swimming

The third day of the swimming competition again became golden for the Russian national team.

Valeria Shabalina won one award of the highest dignity at the start of the Paralympics, and added another one to it on Friday.

The 26-year-old athlete, competing among the persons with intellectual disabilities, took first place in the 200-meter freestyle.

Unlike her first final, in which Shabalina won with a world record, she now had to withstand tough competition with Briton Bethany Firth, who was the reigning Paralympic champion in this form.

After 150 meters, the Russian woman was inferior to her, but was able to add so much that in the end she won 0.28 seconds against her rival.

Daria Pikalova is still pursuing her first Paralympic gold medal.

In Friday's 100m backstroke final, the 27-year-old won her sixth career medal but stopped short of victory.

She was 0.32 seconds short of the result of British swimmer Hannah Russell.

Pikalova will try to win the long-awaited gold at three more distances.

Another bronze in the team's piggy bank was put by Vyacheslav Emelyantsev, who performed in the same category as Shabalina. He was to become one of the heroes of the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, before which he won three gold medals at the World Championship. But his debut took place only in Tokyo, where he had to work hard to snatch bronze from Australian Liam Schulter.

Another native of Russia also rose to the podium, competing for another country.

The name of the American Jessica Long and her story have long been known to many sports fans.

She was born in Bratsk under the name of Tatyana Kirillova without small shin bones, and her mother abandoned the child, after which she was adopted by a couple from the United States.

Having matured, the girl became a real legend of Paralympic swimming.

From 2004 to the beginning of the current Paralympics, she won 23 medals, including 13 gold medals.

She arrived in Tokyo for her fifth Games and so far limited herself to bronze in the 100-meter backstroke.

Fencing

Until recently, the Russian fencing team only dreamed of their first Paralympic medals.

In Tokyo, several athletes at once managed not only to climb the podium, but also to conquer it twice.

Team epee tournaments were held on Friday, which brought gold to men and bronze to girls.

The day before, Alexander Kuzyukov had already managed to win an individual tournament, Maxim Shaburov - to become a silver medalist, and Artur Yusupov - to reach the quarterfinals.

After that, they could already challenge the most powerful power in wheelchair fencing - China.

The two countries first faced off at the group stage, and this match was left to the Asian team.

But the defeat did not matter, since the decisive battles were still ahead.

The Russians made it to the final, where they again met with the Chinese.

The new round of the confrontation began quite successfully, until Tian Jiansuan won the fight with Kuzyukov with a score of 9: 1.

But Shaburov managed to immediately return the advantage to his team, after which the final was already held under the dictation of Russian fencers.

The women's team, as part of the silver medalist of the personal tournament, Victoria Boykova, Alena Evdokimova and Yulia Maya, has not yet been able to fight with Chinese rivals.

They met in the semifinals, and after the fourth duel, the backlog became double-digit.

But in the fights for bronze with Hong Kong, the Russians did not flinch.

They never allowed their rivals to be ahead, and Boykova and Maya even won one of their duels with a clean sheet.

Judo

At the Paralympics in Tokyo, a judo tournament among blind athletes started. In this sport, the Russian national team has its own real legend - the representative of the weight category up to 48 kg Victoria Potapova. Even as a child, she completely lost her eyesight due to cancer, but this did not prevent her from taking up judo. In 2004, Potapova won the first bronze at the Paralympics, and four and eight years later she repeated that success.

The 47-year-old Muscovite also came to Japan, the homeland of her sport. Potapova won two fights and reached the semifinals, but lost in it to Azerbaijani Shakhan Khadzhiyeva, and failed to realize her dream of a more valuable medal. But the Russian woman did not give up bronze either. In a duel with Taiwanese Li Kai Lin, it took her a little more than a minute to defeat her rival with ippon. Potapova dedicated her fourth medal to her daughter - she also had eye problems since childhood, and the athlete had to raise funds for her treatment, which helped the girl stay sighted.

Another veteran of the Paralympics, Alesya Stepanyuk, then rose to the third step of the podium.

In 2008, she already won bronze in the category up to 52 kg, and after 13 years she repeated that result.

The 36-year-old athlete lost her first fight in Tokyo, but qualified for the consolation tournament.

In its final, the Russian woman defeated the host of the competition, Yui Fujiwara.

Athletics

The track and field competition also kicked off on Friday.

The first gold for Russia in this sport was won by the shot putter in the F37 category Albert Khinchagov.

The athlete from North Ossetia, at the age of 24, had already won the European and World Championships, and to complete the collection he had to win the Paralympics.

In the final, he was the only one who sent a projectile for 15 m.In his best attempt, Khinchagov broke his personal record with a result of 15.78 m.

Andrey Vdovin was the same confident favorite in the T37 running category. He has nine victories at the world championships, including three at the last tournament in 2019. However, this season he suddenly had a strong rival in the person of American Nick Mayhew, who was previously involved in Paralympic football. Even before arriving in Tokyo, he broke the world record in the 100-meter, and in the preliminary races he ran out of 11 seconds as the first in his class.

In the final, Vdovin was never able to catch up with Mayhew - he once again exceeded the world achievement, stopping the stopwatch at around 10.95 s. Vdovin became the second with the best time for Europe. Although he could be offended to give in in a sport in which he had not known defeats for many years, his compatriot Chermen Kobesov had even worse. In the same race, he became the fourth, losing only one hundredth of a second to the Indonesian Saptoyoga Purnomo.