The penultimate day of competition is once again synonymous with French victories at the Tokyo Paralympic Games on Friday, September 3. The pair made up of Stéphane Houdet – flag bearer in Tokyo – and Nicolas Peifer won Paralympic gold in wheelchair tennis and thus retain their title. After three hours of play, the French won in three sets (7-5, 0-6, 7-6) against the British Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid.
??? The titles accumulate but the emotion remains the same for @Nicolas_Peifer and @HoudetStephane! The tricolo pair … https://t.co/jqGvOq2Q7Y
A few minutes later, table tennis players Fabien Lamirault and Stéphane Molliens were also crowned Paralympic champions. The French first beat South Koreans Soo-yong Cha and Jin-cheol Park in three sets to two. All they had to do was win a singles match, a challenge taken up by Fabien Lamirault against Soo-yong Cha. The table tennis player won his second gold medal, after his individual title on Monday.
During the night, cyclist Kévin Le Cunff also won the gold medal in the final of the road road race (category C4-5). The 33-year-old Northerner notably beat the Ukrainian Yegor Dementyev, who had robbed him of third place on Friday in the individual track pursuit, but who had to settle for second place last night. The Dutchman Daniel Abraham Gebru completes the podium. Kévin Le Cunff thus brought the French cycling team its fifth title.
Silver and bronze too
Still in cycling, Alexandre Lloveras and his driver Corentin Ermenault won the bronze medal in the B road race later in the day. They completed the race in three hours, six minutes and fourteen hundredths, behind four Dutch riders: Vincent ter Schure and his driver Timo Fransen took the gold, and Tristan Bangma and Patrick Bos took the silver.
In addition, Rémy Boullé won the silver medal in canoeing, the first in the discipline at these Games. The French lost to Hungarian Peter Kiss, who even improved his personal best. Kayaker Nélia Barbosa will try to win a new medal in the final on Saturday.
The French delegation totaled fifty-one medals on Friday – including ten in gold – two days before the end of the Games, and climbed back to thirteenth place in the standings.