Dame Sarah Storey wins record-extending 18th Paralympic gold medal with cycling time trial success – before accusing organisers of sexism over ‘appalling’ Paris course

Sarah Storey wins because she goes the extra mile. She travelled to Paris, with children in tow, in May to recce the road time trial course on which she won a fifth successive Paralympic gold medal on Wednesday.

She was astonished to find it was just 14.1km in length – almost 8km shorter than any Paralympic course she has ever raced.

She wrote to the Paralympic organisers to protest, observing that competitors needed something longer and tougher to test themselves against and project the quality of their sport. No reply.

While most of the men in her category raced two laps of the course at Clichy-sur-Bois, a suburb in north-west Paris, virtually all the women were limited to one. Blink and you’d have missed her. 

Storey warmed up in the dark, raced not long after 8am and by 8.30am had won gold. She said the disparity with the men’s challenge represented sexism and that the women’s course had been ‘appalling.’

‘This is the shortest Paralympic time trial we’ve ever had,’ Storey said. 

‘It’s a real shame because you don’t get to showcase para-sport in the way that you want to. There’s plenty of time in the day for us to do two laps like the men. At championships you expect to race a minimum of 22k. I really hope that they never do this to the women again.’ 

Seven of the 12 men’s races and one of the seven women’s time trials on Wednesday were across the longer distance.

Paralympic organisers seemed to have bungled by trying to cram 19 time-trial events into a single day: four and a half hours of competition, including an unfathomable three-hour mid-competition break. But no one from the local organising committee or the UCI governing body responded to requests for comment or an explanation.

Limiting visibility for women’s races is an act of gross complacency by organisers, particularly given the distinct sense that these Paralympics are struggling for the same cut-through the they have enjoyed since London 2012.

Storey’s time trial was actually more competitive than those she won at four previous consecutive Paralympics. The 46-year-old, who has no functioning left hand, was seven seconds behind the teenage French rider Heidi Gaugain at the course’s 5.8km checkpoint, eventually winning by 4.69 seconds – 32 years on from her Paralympic debut at Barcelona in 1992. Gaugain, 27 years Storey’s junior, took silver.

Storey’s compatriot Blaine Hunt, who finished 11th in the equivalent men’s event, across 28.2kms, backed her criticism. ‘If there was equality, that would be great,’ Hunt said. 

‘On the track, the women do 500 metres, we do one kilometre. I don’t see there’s any reason why they can’t do one kilometre. I’m all for things being brought together and being equal and I’ll fight to that until the end.’

But Briton Fran Brown did not take the same view as the 18-times Paralympian gold medallist. ‘We are capable of riding a bit further, but we all did the same course on the day so make the most of it,’ Brown said after taking silver in her C1-3 category.

Storey, who has no functioning left hand, said it was incumbent on her to speak out. ‘I’m happy, but there’s always ways to improve things for the people that come behind you,’ she said.