Warlpiri teen Telaya Blacksmith will move on to long jump with Australian and Oceania records after a gritty run in the women's 400m T20 sprint final overnight.
Blacksmith, 16, set the area records in Tuesday morning's heat rounds, where she qualified for the final with a time of 57.96 seconds at Stade de France and entered the history books at Australia's 16th Indigenous Paralympian.
She entered the stadium floor with a huge smile before moving to the starting blocks.
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The multi-discipline athlete and age champion finished eighth in Wednesday's medal race - certain to lose no fans with her 59.37 seconds against tough company.
Turkey's Aysel Onder, who set a new world record the previous evening, was pipped by a personal best run from Ukraine's Yuliia Shuliar for gold.
Blacksmith made a strong start and cut back serious distance on the first straight to move into sixth from the inside lane, before fading in the later stages after race leaders emerged
She moves on to the long jump early Saturday morning, but not without a slight look ahead to Los Angeles 2028.
"The final was pretty hard but now I know what to look forward to by making the next Paras," Blacksmith said, News Corp reports.
"I'm happy I got this far to be honest. Another four years, I'll do it again, and I'll see what happens from there."
Via Paralympics Australia, Blacksmith said it was an "amazing" experience progress to the medal race.
"Definitely I want to do it again and see what happens from there. It's just amazing that I got to run in the finals…. it's the crowd and adrenalin, it's so much fun," Blacksmith said.
The women's long jump T20, featuring Blacksmith, kicks off from 3:50am (AEST) on Saturday morning.
Blacksmith's 5.14m personal best (set in March, according to Athletics Australia) would have placed her sixth in the Tokyo final.
