Great Britain's David Weir loses Paralympic winning streak
By Michael Cantillon
Last Updated: 13/09/16 7:07am
Six-time Paralympic champion David Weir finished fifth in the wheelchair T54 400m race, ending his winning run of Paralympic gold medals.
Weir, 37, won four golds at London 2012 and had set his sights on adding a fifth successive Paralympic gold on Monday but finished fifth, as fellow Briton Richard Chiassaro finished in fourth.
Weir had won his heat on Sunday, registering the third fastest time, but could not stay in contention in Monday's final as the Netherlands' Kenny van Weeghel won gold, Liu Yang of China winning Silver and Tunisia's Yassine Gharbi taking bronze.
"I don't know what happened, I just didn't get away as cleanly as I did yesterday," said Weir.
"My top speed wasn't as high as it could have been, but it's just one of those things."
Rio 2016 is Weir's fifth Paralympic games coming two decades after his first appearance at Atlanta 1996 when he was 17-years-old.
Since then, the six-time world champion has won a total of ten Paralympic medals, winning a silver and bronze at Athens 2004, two golds, a sliver and a bronze at Beijing 2008 and four golds at London 2012.
Weir still has four chances to win gold in Rio starting with the 1500m final later on Monday, as well as in the 800m, 4 x 400m relay and marathon.
"It doesn't really knock my confidence. The 1500m heats are later on today so I'll go back and sit and think about what I need to do. It just wasn't clean off the line like in the heats," Weir added.
"It's moved on massively and improved so much, but today was a little bit slow.
"I'm a bit disappointed to be honest, I didn't execute the points that I should have done, but that's racing and how it goes."
