Tokyo Paralympics: Chan Yui-lam into final as Hui Ka-chun narrowly misses out in the 100m backstroke heats
- Chan caps last individual category heat in style to finish sixth of top eight for final this evening
- Fellow Paralympics debutant Hui, 20, is ‘very happy’ with his performance and reiterates he will ‘keep improving’
The 17-year-old swam a one minute, 12.57 seconds (her personal best is 1:10.64) to finish third in her heat – behind Valeriia Shabalina of the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) and Madeleine McTernan of Great Britain – to ensure she finished sixth of the top eight qualifiers at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
She faces a tough task in the final scheduled 5.10pm Hong Kong time as the likes of Britons Bethany Firth and Applegate and Russian Shabalina have clocked times below 1:10.00. One impressive takeaway is that Chan, a 2018 Asian Para Games gold (100m butterfly), silver (200m individual medley) and bronze (100m backstroke), has one of the fastest reaction times of the octet.
She last competed against such high-level opponents at the 2019 world championships, where she won bronze in the 100m butterfly and finished fourth in the 100m backstroke.
Meanwhile, teammate Hui Ka-chun finished fourth in his 100m backstroke S14 heat with a time of 1:02.74 to narrowly miss out on qualifying for the afternoon final.
