Stephen Clegg finally got the monkey off his back as he claimed a first Paralympic gold medal in a world record time. 

The Borders swimmer had been left deflated with two silvers and a bronze in Tokyo but has found the fun in swimming again and it propelled him to men’s S12 100m backstroke gold. 

Clegg’s specialist event is the men’s S12 100m butterfly, which is still to come, and he was overwhelmed by emotion after winning a long-awaited gold in his first event of the week. 

He smashed the world record by 0.33 seconds to begin a gold rush in the pool for ParalympicsGB, with two more following in the space of 37 minutes. 

“I use the expression ‘got the monkey off the back’,” the 28-year-old said “Now the target is still to win that butterfly at the end of the week.  

“As soon as I touched that wall in Tokyo and didn’t win that one, I wanted it more than ever. Going into Tokyo I had the plan of retiring if I won and that didn’t happen.

“The last three years have been spent revising my approach to the sport and rediscovering my love for the sport and it’s brought me to here.

“Now I can look back and almost be grateful for that second place in Tokyo and know that not necessarily it was the reason, but that if I didn’t finish second, I might not be here today.

“Breaking world records is an incredible thing and now I’ve got two.”

Clegg qualified fastest from the heats in a minute flat but knew that there was more to give as he looked to claim the prize he desperately wanted.

Clegg, who is from Newcastleton, had won the world backstroke title in Manchester last year in a time almost a second slower than his winning one in Paris. 

His form comes after he and coach Mark Trodden have tried a variety of techniques to allow him to fall back in love with swimming again. 

“Tokyo had a lot of internal pressure to succeed,” added Clegg, who is one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing them to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support – which has been vital on their pathway to the Paris 2024 Games. 

“I had this narrative of depression and anxiety from my time before swimming in 2014 and as I progressed through swimming, I started to feel better about myself.

“Tokyo was supposed to be the fairytale ending to that journey and I pulled away the curtain of look at me now type of thing.

“The first two events I had in Tokyo went really well, they were really good performances, they were big PBs.

“For me it was all about the butterfly and I walked out in that final in 2021 really tense, uncomfortable and just had this overwhelming weight on my shoulders to perform.

“Post-Tokyo was stripping it all the way back to the fundamentals of what I really wanted to do. If it is still what I wanted to do.

“Me and my coach sat down and we went back to the core of skill acquisition and playfulness in training.

“Lots of people start to teal off at my age. I’m still getting better. It’s fun again.”

As well as moving his personal Paralympic medal tally to four, Clegg has also moved closer to sister Libby in the family battle. 

Libby, a sprinter on the track, won five Paralympic medals, including two golds, across her career, while their brother James won one bronze in the pool at London 2012. 

And with two events still to go, Clegg is confident he can eclipse his sister - who was there to greet him as he got out of the pool. 

“Me and my sister had a chat before coming out here about the family medal tally,” Clegg said. “I think she has got five, I’ve got two more events and I’m at four.” 

Clegg was the first British swimmer in the pool for Saturday’s finals and, in the space of just over half an hour, the Brits added five medals to the tally. 

William Ellard, Clegg’s roommate, immediately followed him with a world record and gold in the men’s S14 200m freestyle for his second medal at his debut Games. 

Also claiming her second medal in her second event was Poppy Maskill who finished the women’s S14 200m freestyle with silver, while compatriot Louise Fiddes claimed bronze. 

The Super Saturday was completed by Alice Tai, who won her first individual Paralympic title just two years after electing to have her leg amputated with gold and a Paralympic record in the women’s S8 100m backstroke. 

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