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Preamble
Hello and welcome back. We’re past the halfway stage of these Games, but the sport is unrelenting. Here’s what’s still to come on day eight in Tokyo, courtesy of my colleague Martin Belam.
All events are listed here in local Tokyo time. Add an hour for Sydney, subtract eight hours for Dundee, 13 hours for New York and 16 hours for San Francisco.
🌟If you only watch one thing: 6pm Badminton – incredibly there are still sports having their first day, and on Wednesday badminton takes a bow. Indeed it is a new sport making its Paralympics debut. There are 22 group stage matches, and overall there are 14 different competitions – including athletes in wheelchairs (WH1 & WH2), those of short stature (SS6), those with lower limb impairments (SL3-SL4) and those with upper limp impairments (SU5). The majority of the finals are on Saturday 4 September.
- 12:30pm Wheelchair basketball – the men’s competition hits the quarter-final stage: Turkey v USA in underway and will be followed by Spain v Germany, Great Britain v Canada at 6.15pm and Japan v Australia to finish the day.
- 3.05pm Boccia – there are four bronze medal play-offs and then four finals today, including one for Britain’s David Smith 🥇
- 9.30am Cycling Road – essentially there are six races on Wednesday that go off in three slots. The men’s H5 and men’s H1-2 are already done and dusted. The women’s H5 and H1-4 are in progress. The men’s H4 and men’s H3 start at 2.15pm and 2.20pm. All the road races take place on a 13.2 km circuit that starts and finishes at the Fuji International Speedway. It’s lumpy and there’s a 3.5 km climb up to the finish line. The number of laps will vary between the classes 🥇
- 1:45pm Shooting – one of the main events – the final of the mixed 10m air rifle prone SH1 – has been contested, while the SH2 category is at 1.45pm 🥇
- 2pm Table tennis – Wednesday is semi-final day in the team table tennis – there are 20 (yes, 20) matches to enjoy. It means that 20 teams will be going forward to the finals – and that 20 teams today will be leaving Tokyo with a bronze medal – there are no third-place play-offs in the table tennis 🥉
- 11am Wheelchair tennis – it’s the men’s singles quarter-finals, the semi-finals in the women’s doubles, and the quads doubles has both the bronze medal play-off and the final 🥇
- 1.15pm Goalball – it is quarter-final day for the women: Turkey v Australia, Israel v Japan, China v Brazil and the US v Not Russia.
- There are also two sessions as usual for swimming (5pm) with 15 medals and athletics (7pm) with 17 medals, and the weather looks to be cooling so that the wheelchair tennis might stick to its schedule.