A 17th triumph makes her the most decorated Paralympic athlete in British history and she may be still a contender in 2024
Attempting to put a marathon athletic career into context can seem reductive. It is 29 years since Dame Sarah Storey won the first Paralympic gold medal of the series which reached a climactic point on Thursday morning, when her victory in Tokyo’s rain-soaked C4-5 road race pushed her gold medal tally to 17, making her the most crowned Paralympic athlete in British sporting history. That’s five more golds than the golden couple of British Olympic cycling, Jason and Laura Kenny.
When Storey tackled her first Paralympics aged 14, as a swimmer in Barcelona, cycling was a Cinderella sport. Chris Boardman’s gold medal in that Games was a glorious aberration, and the “medal factory” in Manchester – which now seems as if it has been there for ever – was not even a gleam in the eye of its founder, Boardman’s then-coach Peter Keen; it began life five years later. Storey’s Paralympic debut is that long ago that when she first pulled on GB kit, Lance Armstrong was not even a professional cyclist, Miguel Indurain was in his prime, Kelloggs and the Milk Marketing Board still sponsored cycling Tours of Britain, and in the political world, Tony Blair as prime minister was a remote prospect.