Paralympic Games: Holmes' record haul

CHRIS HOLMES yesterday equalled the record for the most gold medals ever won by any individual at a Paralympic Games.

The 21-year-old from Kidderminster won his fifth event in Barcelona, the 100 metres backstroke, in a world best of 1min 12.33sec.

His achievement ranks above the five golds won by the British swimmer, Mike Kenny, at the 1988 Games, owing to a subsequent toughening of the disability classification. Holmes, a politics student, has the opportunity for more in the 100m freestyle and individual medley for the partially sighted.

The wheelchair track athlete Tanni Grey, 23, from Cardiff, took her third gold of the Games in a time of 31.19sec, setting a Paralympic record in the 200m.

Antonio Rebollo, the Spaniard who fired a blazing arrow to light the Olympic flame in Barcelona, failed to win a medal in the archery competition. Rebello is a polio sufferer who won silver in Los Angeles and bronze in Seoul, but he was eliminated in yesterday's archery quarter-finals.