Report and photo from John Coxon
Thursday 11th , Sarah moved from the velodrome to the roads of the Ming Tomb Reservoir and won the women's LC1/LC2/CP4 individual time-trial in 37 min 16.65 sec for what was to be Britain's third road race gold of the day. She was the first rider on the course and set a blistering pace, and none of the other nine riders could match her. She finished over a minute ahead of the USA's Schuble with 37 minutes 16.65 seconds. "I felt really strong although I could feel the pursuit from Wednesday still in my legs a little bit and I was a bit wobbly on a few of the corners,"
Sarah , under her maiden name Bailey, made her Paralympic debut in Barcelona aged just 14, winning two gold medals, three silvers and one bronze in the pool . Now thirty years old , she had learned to swim at the age of four following the tragic accident of a classmate. By the age of eight, she was the fastest swimmer in her school, and at 14 had won her first international race in the 100m backstroke at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics. By the age of 27 Sarah had won 27 gold medals at international level, with 130 national swimming titles and broken 48 world records. She changed sports after suffering from a series of ear infection problems having taken up cycling for cross training when she was out of the pool.
Wednesday 10th , in the women's individual cycling pursuit , Manchester based athlete, Sarah Storey, took the Gold for the LC1-2/CP4 category in a world-record time of 3:28.321 even though USA's Jennifer Schuble set a world record for her class of 4:01.243. (Co-incidentally , Sarah's husband Barney piloted partially sighted Anthony Kappes in the tandem sprint to his second gold of the games just an hour later and this led today's Guardian to recount that the Storey family had "pocketed more golds than France !" In last month's Olympics Britain's Rebecca Romero - another sport cross-over medallist - won the event in 3:28.321 and , tantalisingly for the future , Sarah's new world record time would have found her in sixth place in the Olympic version of the event. Sarah had finished fifth behind Schuble on Monday in the 500m time trial at the Laoshan Velodrome despite being faster, because of a factoring system based on level of disability.
Sarah admitted after her world record breaking race, "I can't quite believe I've gone 3:36. That would have got me a top eight place at the Olympics. The fact that a Paralympian can finish in that sort of time and that sort of position is amazing. I can't remember much about the race except my legs are hurting. Winning gold in a completely different sport gives me goose bumps."
