Belarusian swimmer Ihar Boki won his 20th Paralympic title on Monday by winning the 50m freestyle S13 category to equal France’s Béatrice Hess.
With four gold medals already won in Paris, the 30-year-old visually impaired para-swimmer, who competes under the neutral banner, is the most decorated man in the history of the Paralympic Games. He is only surpassed by the American Trischa Zorn (32 titles between 1980 and 2004).
After winning the 100m butterfly, the 100m backstroke and the 400m freestyle, he this time won the 50m freestyle in 23.65 seconds, relegating the Ukrainian Illia Yaremenko to twelve hundredths of a second. Another Ukrainian, Oleksii Virchenko, completed the podium, 20 hundredths behind.
Boki is competing in the S13 category reserved for visually impaired athletes suffering from mild blindness.
He is currently the most successful athlete at these Games and he will have the opportunity to further inflate his gigantic list of achievements on Tuesday with the 200m medley SM13, of which he is the double defending champion and where he will be able to add a 21st gold medal to his tally.
Boki began his raid in London in 2012 and has left his opponents with little to lose, with just one silver and one bronze medal to his 20 titles.
In Paris, on the podium, he is not facing his national flag but a white flag with AIN written on it for “neutral individual athlete”, due to international sanctions against Russia and its allies since the start of the war against Ukraine. It is the Paralympic anthem that resounds to salute his successes at La Défense Arena.
fby-fs/hpa
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