Sao Paulo Grand Prix: Five of the Best

The 2018 World Para Athletics Grand Prix series continues in São Paulo, Brazil this week (26-28 April), with over 230 Para athletes set to compete in the second Grand Prix of the year.

Here are five top moments from years gone by:

1. World and Paralympic champion Petrucio Ferreira first made his mark on the international stage when he smashed the 200m world record in São Paulo in 2015, clocking 21.49. Ferreira was just 18-years-old when he knocked 0.25 seconds off the previous T47 world record set by Australia’s Heath Francis in 2008.

2. South Africa’s Ilse Hayes was also in record-breaking form in 2015, clocking 11.89 over 100m in São Paulo to become the world’s fastest female Para athlete in the world – a position the T13 sprinter held until Cuban Omara Durand clocked 11.65 four months later.

3. In 2016 the Grand Prix moved to Rio de Janeiro, doubling as the test event for that year’s Paralympic Games. Denmark’s Daniel Wagner leapt a new world record 6.67m in the men’s long jump T42, while Brazilian Daniel Martins took nearly half a second off his own 400m T20 world record.

4. Back to São Paulo for 2017, where the action took place in the city’s new Brazilian Paralympic Centre. Alessandro Rodrigo broke the men’s discus F11 world record which had stood for 19 years, throwing 44.66m before going on to secure world gold in London, Great Britain.

5. Thiago Paulino showed he had put the heartache of Rio 2016 behind him – he finished fifth in the Paralympic Games – when he set a new discus F57 world record in São Paulo last year with a massive 48.04m. He also went on to claim gold at London 2017.