Despite starting slow, he pulled off an impressive swim to finish third in the first heat at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre with a time of 33.46s.

The Sarawakian will be aiming to improve his personal best of 33.20s in the final, scheduled to take place at 6.29pm Malaysian time.

“I wanted to keep some energy for later, that’s why I was a bit behind in the beginning,” said the 26-year-old, who suffered deformity in both legs after an accident at the age of 17.

Having emerged the fifth-fastest swimmer from the two heats, Nur Syaiful is among the top eight who will contest the final.

Weiyi Yuan emerged the fastest swimmer en route to breaking the Paralympic record of 32.65s set by Brazilian Daniel de Faria Dias at London 2012. The Chinese swimmer clocked 31.30s.

Last Thursday, Nur Syaiful finished seventh out of eight swimmers in the men’s S5 100m freestyle event. He clocked 1:15.12s, bettering his previous personal best of 1:15.39s set in London in 2019.