China's gold tally reaches 60,Russia overtake hosts Britain

Thanks to brilliant performances in swimming and track and field, China's gold tally reached 60 at the ongoing London Paralympics on Wednesday.

Four of China's seven golds collected on Day 7 of the Games came from track and field and three others from swimming.

The 15-year-old Chinese swimmer Yang Yang claimed the men's 50m backstroke title, his third gold in London.

Now, China topped the table with 60 gold, 49 silver and 49 bronze medals, followed by Russia with 28-25-20 and Britain 25-36-31, Ukraine 22-17-20, Australia 22-16-23 and the United States 21-18-25.

Russia took five golds on Wednesday from archery, swimming and wheelchair fencing, to overtake hosts Britain which got only two golds on the same day.

Britain had followed China to stand second for several days.

The fantastic scene in the pool came from the women's 100m breaststroke-SB6 final in which 14-year-old Viktoriia Savtsova of Ukraine beat British Charlotte Henshaw to take the gold medal in a time of 46.29 seconds and set a new Paralympic Record.

During the press conference given by U.S. Paralympic Committee secretary general Charlie Huebner on Wednesday, Huebner highlighted the role veterans played.

"They're great ambassadors for our nation," he noted.

On the Paralympic movement in the United States, Huebner said, "a lot of people don't know this and they think the U.S. has been involved in the Paralympic movement for all time, but prior to the last couple of years there were a lot of different disability organizations in the States implementing Paralympic sport without even using the term Paralympic. Our research shows that awareness was less than five percent about the Paralympics before 2002, and 73 percent today."