GB trio win silvers to add to Paris medal hauls

Poppy Maskill and Rhys Darbey both landed individual medley silvers while Alice Tai also added a silver to her collection in the swimming at the Paris Paralympics.

Maskill claimed her fourth medal of the Games with silver in the SM14 200m medley final behind Neutral Paralympic Athlete Valeriia Shabalina.

It follows her butterfly and freestyle relay golds and individual freestyle silver.

The 19-year-old from Cheshire led at halfway but Shabalina overtook her in the second half of the race to retain the title she won while representing Russia at the Tokyo Games.

Darbey, 17, who was also part of the victorious medley relay team on Sunday, put in a strong finish to edge out Australian Ricky Beter for silver in the men's SM14 medley.

Tai, 25, won S8 400m freestyle silver behind American legend Jessica Long to add to her backstroke gold and medley bronze.

Maskill put in strong butterfly and backstroke legs to hold a narrow advantage over Shabalina but the Russian athlete came through to win in two minutes 22.40 seconds with Maskill 1.53secs back.

"I just tried to push on the fly and back because my breaststroke isn't great and I was just trying not to die too much," she said.

"It felt horrible after the breaststroke so I just had to put my head down and try hard. I didn't think coming here that I could win four medals."

The teenager has another good medal chance in the 100m backstroke on Friday.

Darbey, a silver medallist in the men's SM14 medley at last year's World Championships in Manchester, was also pleased with his efforts in the same event on Wednesday.

Gold went to Canada's Nicholas Bennett in a new Paralympic record of 2:06.05 with Darbey clocking 2:06.61 - 0.07 ahead of Beter.

"I knew we had a good chance in the relay but to get an individual medal means a lot to me," said the Welsh swimmer.

"I've put in a lot of work over the last two years and trained hard and I've worked on my touch so I'm glad to see that it paid off."