It was a Super Sunday for Team GB on Day Four of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, with 12 gold medals in a single day setting a national record. Among them was British Paralympic swimmer Alice Tai who won her first individual Paralympic title winning gold in the 100 m backstroke S8 setting a Paralympic record time of one minute 9.06 seconds. 

She then followed it up with a bronze in the SM8 200m individual medley and has since spoken out about her recovery from some of the "worst" moments in her mental health during the Rio 2016 Paralympics.  After winning individual gold on Sunday, the 25-year-old from Poole reflected on suffering from undiagnosed ADHD and how she was at one of the lowest points in the summer of 2016 when she won gold in the team 4x100m medley.

"I'm not going to lie, Rio sucked, my mental health was the worst it's ever been and I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to be alive, to be honest," she told BBC Sport. "To have made such a recovery in my mental health and to have so much surgery over the last three years, I'm so proud of myself and so thankful to the team that supports me."

Tai was born with clubfoot and competed as a Paralympic swimmer in Rio but was then devastatingly forced to withdraw from the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games due to an elbow injury a month prior with her friend Grace Harvey taking her place.

In 2022 she had to have her right leg amputated below the knee and said that she was "thriving" after the operation before going to win gold in the S8 100m backstroke at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham just months later.

The biggest hauls of her decorated swimming career came in the form of four golds at the 2018 European Championships in Dublin and then at the 2019 World Championships in London where she bagged six gold medals out of the seven disciplines she competed in. That year she becamethe first Para-swimmer to win Athlete of the Year prize at British Swimming Awards. 

At the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, she will compete in five disciplines. Having already won a gold and a bronze on Sunday, she will next compete in the 400m freestyle on Wednesday followed by the 50m freestyle on Thursday and then finally the 100m butterfly on Saturday. Despite her many wins, and her already successful Paris Paralympics, the most important thing for her is inspiring others suffering from disabilities. 

"For me, the biggest thing about being a Paralympian is being able to advocate for disability. I really want to break the stigma for my disability, just being here is doing that and I'm so privileged to be able to do that," she says. "I really hope that other people with disabilities, who might be a bit self-conscious, can watch the Paralympics and see someone like them and the next day wake up with a bit more confidence in themselves."