Winter Paralympics: Ukraine claim 10th gold as Brian McKeever makes history

Brian McKeever was already a Winter Paralympic legend for Canada, but he sealed it on Saturday morning with a third gold of these Beijing Games, his 16th career gold and 20th Paralympics medal overall.

The 42-year-old skier won the men’s vision impaired middle distance cross-country race at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon centre. At his sixth Games, incredibly he now hasn’t lost an individual race at a Paralympics since 2006. That 16th gold puts him equal with Germany’s para alpine skier Gerd Schönfelder as the person with the most Paralympics golds.

Elsewhere in the cross-country skiing, there were yet more medals for China as the middle-distance sitting event for women went to Yang Hongqiong, and Mao Zhongwu took the gold in the men’s race. Oksana Masters finished with a silver in the women’s event to become the most decorated US Paralympics cross-country skier.

In the women’s 10km freestyle standing race, Ukraine’s Oleksandra Kononova scored what could be a crucial victory for the final medal table. Her time of 43:01.2 meant she edged out Natalie Wilkie of Canada by just 1.9 seconds, and that was Ukraine’s tenth gold of these games. Another Ukrainian, Iryna Bui, came third having beaten her compatriot to gold in the 10km biathlon earlier this week.

Canada lie third in the medal table with eight golds, with China way in front of every other nation though, both in terms of gold medals – 18 – and in medals overall. China’s total of 58 medals equates to nearly a quarter of all the medals that have been available in Beijing.

Related: Fearless Simpson brothers are changing the game in visually impaired skiing | Ade Adepitan

China had previously only ever won one Winter Paralympics medal in five appearances since they