WITH a bronze medal to his name already this Tokyo 2020 Paralympics there was an opportunity for Bathurst's David Nicholas to add to his tally in Tuesday's men's C3 road time trial.
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Medalling at the Fuji International Speedway course was going to be a tougher ask than his C3 3000m individual pursuit effort on the boards but Nicholas was never far off the pace in Tuesday's 24 kilometre time trial bid.
He came across the line in eighth place in a time of 36 minutes and 56.79 seconds, which made him part of a five rider group who were less than 40 seconds off a podium result.
Great Britain's Ben Watson ended up claiming the gold medal with a stunning time of 35:00.82.
Germany's Steffan Warias (35:57.41) was almost a minute behind in silver and his countryman Matthias Schindler (36:17.95) won the bronze.
Nicholas came across the eight kilometre check in a time of 12:05.22, which at the time put him in fifth place before he slipped back to ninth once every rider came through that mark.
He was 30 seconds off second-placed Masaki Fujita at that stage but Ben Watson came out firing with a 11:26, which had the Brit more than 17 seconds up on the Japanese rider.
Nicholas jumped up a spot to eighth at the 16km mark but had a deficit of one minute and 20 seconds to Watson.
With a 44-second gap to Germany's Steffan Warias in the silver medal position the race for a podium position was well and truly alive for Nicholas over the closing eight kilometres.
Nicholas was only marginally slower (0.2 kilometres an hour) over the final third of the race, holding onto his eighth position and finishing 38 seconds away from the bronze medal.
Nicholas won the time trial at the London 2012 games and was fourth five years at the Rio Paralympics.
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