Australia starts Paralympics with 10-medal haul
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Peter Leek won gold for Australia at the Water Cube. (ABC TV)
Australia's track cycling and swimming teams have claimed a total of 10 medals in the opening day of competition at the Paralympic Games in Beijing, while the men's and women's wheelchair basketball teams have both won their preliminary matches.
Of the 27 gold medals on offer Australia finished with three, along with three silver medals and four bronze, taking up fourth position on the Paralympic medal tally behind the United States, Great Britain and China.
The Australian track cycling team started the gold medal count at Laoshan Velodrome with Christopher Scott winning Australia's first of the Games in the individual pursuit (CP4) before Kieran Modra and pilot Tyson Lawrence broke their own world record to take gold in the blind and vision impaired category.
Bryce Lindores and pilot Steven George finished with bronze in the same event. However it was Greg Ball's bronze medal in the 1km time trial (LC3-4) that kicked off Australia's medal account for the Paralympic Games in Beijing.
Great Britain's Simon Richardson set a world record time of 1 minute 12.936 seconds to take the gold. Paralympic skier turned cyclist, Michael Milton finished ninth.
Australia's medal tally continued to rise in the women's 1km time trial for blind and vision impaired with Felicity Johnson and pilot Katie Parker taking silver and Lindy Hou and pilot Toireasa Gallagher claiming the bronze medal.
Australia had been poised to take the top two positions before world and Paralympic record holders, British duo Aileen McGlynn and Ellen Hunter, posted a time of 1 minute 9.66 seconds to win the gold medal.
Swimming
Australia's strong medal performance continued at the Water Cube, with Peter Leek winning gold in his Paralympic debut in the 100m butterfly (S8).
Breaking the world record he set in the heats, Leek posted a time of 1 minute 00.95 seconds to finish first in the final. China's Wei Yanpeng and Wang Xiaofu took silver and bronze while Australia's Ben Austin finished fifth.
In the 100m butterfly S9 category, Athens silver medallist Matt Cowdrey added another to his collection after Hungary's Tamas Sors swum a world record time of 59.34 seconds to take the gold medal. Sam Bramham of Australia finished seventh.
Australians Ellie Cole and Annabelle Williams won silver and bronze respectively while South Africa's Natalie Du Toit won gold in the women's 100m butterfly (S9).
Du Toit, a five time gold medallist from Athens who also competed in the Beijing Olympic Games, broke her own world record swimming the final in 1 minute 06.74 seconds.
United States swimmer Miranda Uhl set a Paralympic record in the first heat of the 200m individual medley (SM6) only to better her time by almost four seconds and post another world record time of 3 minutes 13.05 seconds in the final and win the gold medal.
Australia's Sarah Rose finished seventh.
In the women's 100m butterfly (S13) final Australia's Prue Watts just missed out on a medal coming in fourth and Teigan Van Roosmalen finished seventh.
Shelley Rogers finished in fourth position in the 200m individual medley (SM7).
In the shooting, ten-time Paralympian Libby Kosmala narrowly missed out on winning her 13th Games medal after finishing fourth in the 10m air rifle standing final.
Kosmala came second in the qualifying round before losing the bronze medal to Puerto Rico's Nilda Gomez Lopez by just 0.1 of a point in the final. Slovakia's Veronika Vadovicova took home the gold while German Manuela Schmermund won the silver medal.
Australia's Sebastian Hume, competing in the men's 10m air rifle, did not reach the final in his event.
Basketball success
The Australian women's wheelchair basketball team posted a solid 59-30 win over Great Britain in their first preliminary match, proving just how serious they are about going one up on their silver medal performances from Athens and Sydney.
Great Britain were inaccurate in front of the goals and despite a last quarter surge the Gliders' defence proved too strong in the end.
Meanwhile, the Australian men posted a thrilling one-point win over Brazil after trailing by 17 points at the half time break.
The Rollers came back to within five points at three quarter time but it came down to the wire in the final term.
Brazil were leading 72-71 with five seconds of game time remaining when Australia's Justin Eveson scored the final basket to win.
In the table tennis, Kelly van Zon from the Netherland beat Australia's Rebecca Julian 3-2 in the women's individual class 6-7 while Sarah Lazzaro fell 0-3 to China's Liu Meili in the class 9 round robin.
