Canadanne

Completely heartbroken by the death of Delays frontman Greg Gilbert, who was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer five years ago. One of my very favourite singers (their second album You See Colours is utterly flawless), and he was also an incredible artist and poet. What a loss to the world this is. He has two young daughters, too.

Makes me wonder if this is why fans in South America haven't been receiving their gifts for years - are they also being returned to sender for some reason?

Hours of childhood fun playing on my beloved Speccy! Thank you Sir Clive!

SECONDED! I really want this shirt!

Two more GB medals on the final day - we won the wheelchair basketball bronze in a rather back-and-forth match (Beautiful Day was playing at the end of the medal ceremony!), and Krysten Coombs came back to win bronze in badminton after losing the first game. I stayed up to watch the latter and frustratingly it was on the only court that didn't have a live stream available, so I just had to watch the stream for the neighbouring court and try to glimpse our scoreboard in the background every so often! (Unfortunately that match ended before ours did, so I didn't even get to see the moment of victory until they showed it later.) Good to read that they're hoping to have live coverage of every sport in Paris 2024, which is long overdue. Impressively we won medals in every sport we entered except shooting, and finished 2nd on the medal table with 41 gold, 38 silver and 45 bronze - 124 in total. I still can't figure out how that one-armed violinist from the opening & closing ceremonies plays her instrument! If it wasn't obvious, I absolutely love the Olympics + Paralympics - I'm so happy and grateful that they went ahead. ❤️ And it's only a few months till the Winter Games, yay!

Hannah Cockroft and Kare Adenegan won 800m wheelchair gold & silver this morning, while Zak Skinner *almost* won bronze in the long jump but was beaten by 2cm in the final round - gutted! We won a bunch more medals in canoe sprint - two golds, a silver and a bronze. (The latter was a very close finish and I thought we'd been overtaken by several others on the line, but apparently not, so that was a nice surprise.) Our tennis players got silver in the women's doubles, and the men's singles bronze went to Gordon Reid. Dan Bethell won badminton silver; they were unexpectedly playing We Are The People in the stadium just before his medal ceremony! We've also won taekwondo bronze and shot put gold.

Wow, lots more medals on Friday including 1500m gold and bronze, canoe sprint gold and 2 bronze (one in a photo finish - he was fading towards the line and I didn't think he would make it!), a very exciting high jump gold (my second favourite event after pole vault), table tennis silver, road race silver, men's doubles tennis silver (in an epic match that came down to a final set tie-break!), swimming silver (so narrowly missing out on gold), 200m silver for Richard Whitehead, javelin bronze (kind of agonising as she led throughout the competition until two others threw further with their final attempts!) and women's singles tennis bronze (another epic that went our way this time). We also won bronze in the universal mixed 4x100m relay which was apparently later upgraded to silver as China got DQed. Such a weird event, but fun! (If you didn't see it, the first leg is visually impaired sprinters with their guides, the second runners are amputees with prosthetics, the third have coordination impairments and the fourth are wheelchair athletes - quite the motley crew!) Boo, there is no coverage of the taekwondo. Really wish I could watch this - it looked very action-packed judging from the live scores on the website, and we won a silver medal in it! Glad I got to see some archery at last (it's quite something to see a one-armed archer drawing the bowstring with their teeth). They have also started showing the shooting now, on a day when we didn't qualify for the final! Gah!

Argh, the website is down again! What a pain! Dreadful weather conditions for the road races this morning - it was raining so much that you could barely tell who was emerging from the fog at the finish line, and the victory podium resembled an island in the middle of a lake! Surprised the cyclists could even see where they were going. Excellent results for GB though, securing gold and silver in both the women's and men's races. For those keeping count, that's Sarah Storey's 17th gold!! Our male GB tennis players have ended up facing each other in the bronze medal match, so the good news is that we're guaranteed a medal, but sadly one of them will be going home empty-handed. Better luck in the women's doubles where we're through to the final and guaranteed at least silver. Bethany Firth won gold in the backstroke for the third Paralympics in a row, while Reece Dunn and Jessica-Jane Applegate won bronze. We also picked up 3 athletics medals with discus bronze for Dan Greaves (he's now won a medal at every Paralympics since Sydney 2000!), 400m wheelchair silver for Sammi Kinghorn and a rather impressive javelin gold for Dan Pembroke. OMG, they actually had a live stream of some archery today! Shame they waited until a day when we lost in the QFs, but perhaps our remaining matches will be available to watch? Badminton is new at the Paralympics this year, including wheelchair classes - looks good from what I've seen so far.

Same - I liked him in F1 and was devastated by the news of his accident (only a few days after 9/11, one of the worst weeks I can remember). I assumed he would never race again so it was incredible how quickly he was back in a car, and an absolute joy to see him later reinvent himself as a Paralympic champion. Such a nice and funny guy too. Beyond gutted that he's since suffered an even more serious injury, but if anyone can manage a significant recovery from something like this, it's him. ❤️ I think the tennis went on till about 2am Tokyo time!! We didn't win the medal in the end...

Hurrah, the website is finally working again. We won a gold today in boccia, silver in swimming, bronze in archery and the wheelchair 100m, and a couple of bronzes in the team table tennis; we are guaranteed at least silver in the other table tennis class after another incredibly close semifinal. And we might still get another medal today - the wheelchair tennis quad doubles bronze match has only just resumed after rain delays!

Feeling the sad absence of Alex Zanardi today as the road cycling gets underway. I was so frustrated being unable to watch him in London and Rio as there was no coverage of these events. Nice to see they are finally showing them in Tokyo, but I wish they hadn't waited until a year when he's unable to compete. I think I was misled by a commentator when I said she had 15 Paralympic medals. It turns out she actually had 15 *gold* medals, which became 16 today, and her total medal haul is 27 since she started as a swimmer in Barcelona '92!!! She's freaking superhuman! We got 5 medals in the cycling today, also including a gold for Ben Watson which means all 14 of our GB cyclists will go home with a medal. George Peasgood made the podium in both triathlon and cycling. Elsewhere, we won 5 swimming medals including another gold for Reece Dunn (Louise Fiddes got bronze after successfully appealing a disqualification in the heats!), and 2 athletics bronzes for Olivia Breen (long jump) and Columba Blango (400m). Plus we are guaranteed at least silver in the wheelchair tennis men's doubles and the individual boccia, and 3 table tennis team medals - helluva close match in the women's semifinal! Another highlight of today was the one-legged high jump which is always remarkable to watch - *HOW*?! Btw, am I the only one who is completely unable to view the Paralympics website since last night? It just says "Access Denied - You don't have permission to access [URL] on this server", no matter what page I try. I thought it must be under some sort of DDoS attack but nobody else seems to have mentioned it on Twitter?? Luckily most info can also be found on Channel 4's Paralympics microsite but it's a bit more of a faff to use.

Monday medals: Andrew Small and Harri Jenkins won 100m wheelchair gold & bronze, Louise Sugden bronze in powerlifting and Phoebe Paterson Pine gold in archery (still so frustrated that they're not showing either of these sports, and there was no coverage of the shooting final we reached either). Jonnie Peacock was in an agonising photo finish for 100m bronze, and ended up sharing it as they actually couldn't be separated! The final dressage events saw us pick up one of each colour again - incredibly this was Lee Pearson's 14th gold medal, going all the way back to Sydney 2000. If anyone missed the equestrian team's hilarious appearance on The Last Leg tonight, I highly recommend catching up with it!

GB also picked up one more fencing team medal (silver) after some technical delays on Sunday! USA have crept up the medal table since yesterday, haven't they?

A better result for Alison's brother-in-law George Peasgood, who won silver this morning. We also had two medallists in the women's triathlon - Claire Cashmore won bronze and Lauren Steadman took the gold, one better than she got in Rio! The amazing Hannah Cockroft and Kare Adenegan won gold & silver in the wheelchair 100m, and GB won 2 golds in the rowing (rather more successful than our Olympians this year). Will Bayley won table tennis silver, so no table jumping this time. Elliot Stewart and Chris Skelley won silver and gold respectively in judo. I don't know why it would be, but the judo at the Paralympics seems way more entertaining than it is at the Olympics? There's so much more action! Three more swimming medals - 2 silvers and a bronze. Watching Ellie Challis, I am so impressed at how fast someone can swim with no legs and two half-arms! (She is also surprisingly dextrous for a person with no hands... I wasn't sure she'd be able to put on her own medal or face mask, but she did it somehow!) Maria Lyle won 200m bronze, and GB won dressage team gold - yay!

Yay, more stuff is being shown that wasn't in Rio - triathlons, rowing, and boccia (another sport I've never been able to watch before). The triathlon transitions are certainly a bit different at the Paralympics, with athletes being helped out of the water before putting their legs on! Shame they still don't appear to be showing the archery. Our latest medals: Paul Karabardak, Tom Matthews and Jack Hunter-Spivey all won table tennis bronze. Will Bayley is through to the final after a very close SF! He got another yellow card for his exuberant celebrations, kicking down the barrier so he could run over to his team. (He got one in Rio for jumping on the table after winning gold!) A fantastic final day in the velodrome with 3 gold, a silver and a bronze. Married couple Neil & Lora Fachie won a gold each (the Kennys of the Paralympics!), and Jaco van Gass, Kadeena Cox & Jody Cundy (Team Awesome!) won gold in the mixed team sprint - they were behind until the final lap, but I *knew* Jody Cundy could pull it back just like he did in Rio. Three medals in the pool - another gold for Maisie Summers-Newton, silver for Grace Harvey and gold in the mixed relay. Thomas Young and Sophie Hahn both won 100m gold, Dimitri Coutya won another fencing bronze and Micky Yule won powerlifting bronze. GB are also through to the wheelchair rugby final. And Alison Peasgood missed out on a triathlon medal by just 2 seconds!