Rob Hatch
BBC Radio 5 live commentator in Tokyo

Sarah Storey has set off like a house on fire.

She is absolutely rolling.

At 500m down, Sarah Storey has almost a three second lead.

Astonishing. It's clear she's already going for the catch.

Rob Hatch
BBC Radio 5 Live commentator in Tokyo

Pursuiting is a funny sport.

It’s a time trial against the clock but if you catch your opponent before the end then you’ve won. If Sarah Storey does perform to all those fantastic levels we’ve seen, she will be the Paralympic champion.

Can she take another second or two off the world record? We know it’s a fast track. We saw in the Olympics the times the cyclists were getting – times we never thought were possible.

We're just moments away from the first British gold medal of the 2020 Paralympics.

Sarah Storey v Crystal Lane-Wright. A repeat of the Rio final.

They're underway. 12 laps of the track to go.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson
Eleven-time Paralympic champion on BBC Radio 5 Live

Sarah Storey is incredible. Look at what she’s achieved. She holds 75 world records, she has 14 Paralympics gold.

She’s the type of person who could have picked four or five sports to go into and been equally successful. Her drive, her determination. She just doesn’t stop. She pushes herself. She’s already broken the world record in the heats but she won't be happy with that. She probably wants to try and catch Crystal Lane-Wright.

We're likely to have to wait a couple of minutes more for Storey and Lane-Wright's gold medal race with the bronze medal race only just finishing.

That was won by Marie Patouillet of France.

Sarah Storey will be taking on GB team-mate Crystal Lane-Wright in the final, who took up para-sport after watching Storey compete at Beijing 2008 and realising she had a similar disability.

Lane-Wright is now a two-time Paralympic medallist, having won silver and bronze in Rio and won the World Championship title in this event in 2018.

Image source, ParalympicsGB

Ahead of Sarah Storey and Crystal Lane-Wright's final, let's take a look at classification.

The 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo involves 22 sports but not all disability categories can compete in each event. Each sport has different physical demands and so has its own set of classifications.

Cycling is open to athletes who have impaired muscle power, impaired range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis (which may result from cerebral palsy, a brain injury, a stroke or multiple sclerosis) or a visual impairment.

C1-5: Riders compete on bicycles, which can be adapted for their impairments. They may have a condition like cerebral palsy or have a leg or arm amputation.

C1 athletes have the most severe limitation while C5 athletes meet the minimum impairment criteria. For example, an athlete with a double leg amputation would compete in the C3 class, while an athlete with a single leg amputation would compete a class higher in C4.

Rachael Latham
BBC Paralympic reporter and former Para-swimmer

When I first met Sarah, she was 21-years-old and had already won five Paralympic gold medals. I was only nine, but I knew she was something special.

She coached and mentored me for six years and I quickly learned there are two sides to Sarah. She is assertive and fierce, but that shouldn't come as a surprise, as you don't become the most decorated British female Paralympic athlete of all time without such attributes.

However, outside of competition, she has a softer side too. She is exceptionally loyal, supportive and caring to those closest to her. This behaviour was most likely learned from her family, who have always been her support bubble.

Sarah Storey has the opportunity to become Great Britain's most successful Paralympian if she wins gold in all three of her events in Tokyo.

With 14 already to her name, triple gold would see her surpass swimmer Mike Kenny's record of 16 titles.

Read more here.

So far, so good for Sarah Storey.

The 14-time Paralympic gold medallist smashed her own world record in C5 3000m individual pursuit qualifying, setting a new time of 3:27.057.

She'll take on GB team-mate Crystal Lane-Wright in the gold medal final at 06:32. Stay tuned...

Image source, Getty Images

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson
Eleven-time Paralympic champion on BBC Radio 5 Live

The Paralympic journey from the highs of London 2012 to here has not been straightforward.

Before Rio 2016 and with Brazil in a tough economic situation, there was a real chance that those Games would not happen. But they turned it around and at the closing ceremony, it was described by the then International Paralympic Committee president Sir Philip Craven as "the people's Games".

Before the global pandemic, the expectation around the Tokyo Games was huge. Three years ago, I said that it would help the Paralympics take another big step forward with increased media coverage around the world.

No athlete trains for years for any of these things, or to mix in the village, but for those who have done previous Games the feeling will be very different.

Despite all that has happened, I still think these Games will take the movement to another level.

Tokyo is the first city to stage two Paralympic Games, having hosted the 1964 edition when 375 athletes from 21 nations took part in nine sports.

This time, around 4,400 athletes from 162 national Paralympic committees will compete in 539 medal events across 22 sports.

The GB team for Tokyo features 227 competitors - a figure that includes pilots and guides for visually impaired competitors plus competition partners - and they will take part in 19 of the 22 sports.

The Paralympics were officially opened on Tuesday with a powerful opening ceremony in Tokyo.

"Paralympians, you gave your all to be here. Blood, sweat and tears. Now is your moment to show the world your skill, your strength, your determination," said Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee.

"If the world has ever labelled you, now is your time to be relabelled: champion, hero, friend, colleague, role model, or just human. You are the best of humanity and the only ones who can decide who and what you are.

"You are the truth. You are amazing. You choose to be the greatest in whatever the plan is.

"Your performances could change the fortunes of your lives. But most importantly they will change the lives of 1.2 billion forever. This is the power of sport, to transform lives and communities. Change starts with sport. And from tomorrow on, Paralympic athletes start once again to change the world."

Image source, Getty Images

Five long years we've been waiting for this day. But at last, it's here.

It's day one of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

Let the Games begin.

Image source, Getty Images