PARALYMPIC Games gold medalist Poppy Maskill is through to another final.

The 19-year-old, who hails from Middlewich, won her women’s 200m freestyle S14 heat in Paris this morning and will be one of the favourites when the medal race takes place at 4.51pm today.

Maskill, the former Northwich Centurions and Winsford Swim Team competitor, led her heat from start to finish, clocking 2mins 10.36secs.

She has swam the event more than two seconds faster, so has saved fuel in the tank for the showdown later.

Maskill’s name went into the history books and started a media frenzy on Thursday when she won Great Britain’s first gold medal of the Paris Paralympics.

That came in sensational style, winning the women’s100m butterfly S14 in world-record breaking time.

Her successful start to the Games in the Paris La Defense Arena should not have surprised anybody.

She arrived at the Paris games as a multiple world champion para swimmer in the S14 class for athletes with an intellectual impairment.

After claiming a medal of each colour on her international debut at the Madeira 2022 world championships, Maskill continued to establish herself on the global stage with a medal in all five of her events at the Manchester 2023 world championships including gold in the Mixed S14 4x100m freestyle relay.

In Thursday night’s final she went up against two ParalympicsGB teammates in Louise Fiddes and the now former world record holder Olivia Newman-Baronius.

Maskill finished qualifying with the quickest time and wasted no time in taking the lead in the gold medal race.

Nearly a second ahead by the halfway point, the former Middlewich Rose Queen’s victory never really looked in doubt.

She touched the wall first with a time of 1.03.00, a third of a second quicker than the previous world record.