It was the athletics and swimming show for New Zealand, with all 12 of the Kiwi medals coming from those two sports in what was a middling overall return from the Tokyo Paralympics.
While the Games end on Sunday, New Zealand’s involvement concluded on Saturday night with Lisa Adams, gold medallist in the shot put F37, bringing the curtain down with a seventh placed finish in the discus F38.
Adams was one of six gold medallists for New Zealand – three in the pool and three in the athletics stadium, and all of them women – while there were also three silver and three bronze medals.
The haul was down on the 21 from the Rio Paralympics. Ranking the 14 Games that New Zealand has attended, Tokyo would rate 9th equal on total medals, and 6th equal on number of gold medals.
Athletics secured seven medals while swimming nabbed the other five as the cyclists, canoeists, lone shooter Michael Johnson and the Wheel Blacks returned empty-handed, albeit with a few hard luck stories.
Predictably, New Zealand’s greatest Paralympian, Sophie Pascoe, returned the biggest individual medal haul with four – two gold, a silver and a bronze – from her five events. She now sits on a career tally of 19.
The 28-year-old had a heavily disrupted buildup due to Covid and, as her times suggested, was nowhere near her best in Tokyo, but nonetheless she still shone in the pool and was thrilled with four podium finishes.
Her emotion-packed post-final interviews were compulsive viewing, too, as she gave the public rare insight into the pressures and expectations she has of herself.
The only other medal in the pool was a breakthrough gold for 20-year-old Tupou Neiufi which was New Zealand’s first of the Games, in the 100m backstroke S8.
