Team USA athletics leader Roderick Townsend was set for a third Paralympics repeat with his hair dyed like Picasso's eyes.
“I’m a showman,” Townsend remarked of his Paris salon hairstyle. Had they booed me? Jumping would definitely continue.”
On Sunday night, Townsend won the T47 high jump finals with a 2.12-meter (6 feet, 11.5 inches) jump and his third straight gold medal at the Stade de France.
The fans sat quietly or cheered. The T47 category is for competitors with partial arm loss or low-to-moderate arm movement issues.
As the “bad guy,” 32-year-old Townsend, who has an upper right shoulder handicap from birth nerve damage, wants to be the “reason that nobody else gets to win.
He gets another shot at that role in the long jump on Tuesday.
Townsend beat Indian star Nishad Kumar, who won silver in Tokyo and second in Paris, to win the high jump.
Kumar missed 2.12 on three occasions. He lay defeated on the high-jump mat until Townsend embraced him.