The biggest win, of course, is doing what you like the most to the best of your abilities. After that, the rest is gravy.

Sports should be about enjoyment, so what happens if you enjoy and are able to excel in more than one? Nothing prevents athletes from changing disciplines or even doing like US pro athletes Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, combining the American football season with Major League Baseball. Even Michael Jordan took a break from the NBA to hit in minor league ballparks.

It’s a two-for-one of sorts that Spaniard Alvaro Del Amo has taken one step further, competing (and succeeding) in two events in the French capital. The 34-year-old from Madrid took the bronze medal in the discus throw F11 on Thursday, just three days after he had done the same in the men's Shot Put F11event. In his case, he is doubling up Paralympic successes in two different disciplines after playing football as kid, before suffering with retinitis pigmentaria at age eight that rendered him blind at 18.

Pemble, who has cerebral palsy on her right side, finished fourth in the 500m C1-C3 time trial on Saturday and missed out on the podium. In her case, she was spotted by Canada’s cycling federation 10 years ago at the tender age of 14, although she opted to give skiing a chance first.

Moving from the Winter Games to the Summer Games was quite the shift for the England native yet world-class cycler Primoz Roglic, from Slovenia, did something similar before claiming three La Vuelta titles and one Giro win: he transitioned from ski-jumping, incorporating his aerodynamics know-how to fast-paced descents on the some of the world’s most dangerous mountain roads.

In a move that she hoped would translate to similar success, Pemble changed the ski slopes for the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome, where she can still exert top-end speed, yet failed to win a Paralympic medal during the weekend. Despite the heartbreak, however, regret was nowhere to be found.

"As a skier, I was never among the best ranked. At 17, I was a very different athlete. Just taking part in the Peyonchang 2018 Winter Games was a dream. Now I am fighting for medals," the 24-year-old, who competed in five categories six years ago, told AFP.

At 45, Britain's Cundy is far more accomplished, having taken a medal at every Paralympics since 1996, first in swimming and then in track cycling; although she recently told The Guardian that her change of direction was due to “never being a talented swimmer”. Being older, she has less time than Pemble to round up her resumé; unless, of course, she finds another discipline that better suits her capabilities.

Paralympic selections are often tricky for federations because of intricate eligibility rules that make it difficult to form teams were athletes meet the necessary level and category requirements. Hence the French Paralympic and sports committee recently launched a programme called ‘Rélève’ with the purpose of detecting young athletes with the potential to standout in more than one Paralympic discipline.

"My brother proposed to me to do my first triathlon in 2018. I met someone from the federation who told me that there were people specialised in spotting talent," said triathlete Thibault Rigaudeau, who was Paralympic runner-up on Monday after starting his sporting career playing blind football.

With 18 medals between Summer and Winter Games, Ukrainian-born American star Masters holds quite the curriculum and just added to it on Wednesday as she took gold in the H4-5 time trial, her seventh Paralympic title.

"I never imagined I would be competing in so many different sports, some I didn't even know existed. I fell in love with rowing at first sight and when I injured my back in 2013 I had to change, so I tried cycling. I thought I didn't want to live without having tried it," she told the media in April.