Dame Sarah Storey wins record-extending 18th Paralympic gold before stinging attack on ‘appalling’ Paris 2024 chiefs

SARAH STOREY has won an incredible 18th Paralympic gold medal.

The Dame was already Great Britain’s most successful Paralympian ever with 17 gold medals to her name.

Rex

Sarah Storey celebrates winning gold in the road cycling time trial event in Paris[/caption]

Rex

It is the 18th Paralympic gold of her career[/caption]

However, the peerless 46-year-old has now added an 18th Paralympic gold to her collection by winning the women’s individual C5 road cycling time trial in Paris.

The Dame beat French hope Hidei Gaugain to land the medal.

Storey trailed Gaugain by more than seven seconds after 5.8km of the 14.1km course.

But Storey stormed back in the closing stages to complete the course in 20 minutes and 22.15 seconds and retain her title by a 4.69-second lead, which she has won every year since 2008.

It is the ninth Games of her career – the most for a British athlete – after making her Paralympic GB debut in Barcelona in 1992 as a swimmer.

She switched to bikes at Beijing 2008 and is solely competing in road events in Paris 2024, but has done no harm to further cementing her status as a sporting legend.

Storey’s individual medal tally now stands at 29 overall, with 16 medals coming in the pool.

Alana Forster of Australia won bronze.

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Following the race, Storey hit out at organisers after revealing athletes blanked after appealing to them about the course length.

She said: “It’s a short race. This is the shortest Paralympic time trial we have ever had, and I think it’s a real shame because we don’t get to showcase Para-sport in the way we want to.

“You’ll have to ask organisers. There’s plenty of time in the day for us to do two laps like the men. Having fought so hard for parity in women’s cycling, to not have it is a real disappointment.

“I’ve had to put that aside and focus on what I could control, because I couldn’t control the race distance. But I hope they never do this to the women again, because it has been appalling.

“It’s a hilly 10km. I do lots of those at home so I have plenty of practice. But in championships you expect a race of minimum 22km, that’s what we’ve done in all the other Paralympic Games.

“Look back to that incredible course in Beijing, Brands Hatch with all the fans, Rio was flat but longer, Tokyo we had the motor circuit, three laps, it was a real challenge.

“This has been the most disappointing in that sense, given what came before it.”

Storey’s victory was Paralympics GB’s 31st gold medal in Paris and also took the overall tally up to 62.

She will be looking to add a 19th gold medal in the road race on Friday.