DUNFERMLINE athlete Owen Miller has stormed to a sensational gold medal on his Paralympic Games debut.

The 29-year-old claimed victory overnight in the men's T20 1500 metres final after a memorable race in Tokyo.

Owen, a former Woodmill High School pupil who competes for Fife AC, took to the start line at 2.13am, hoping to achieve his ambition of coming home with a medal.

Competing in the T20 classification for athletes with learning or intellectual impairments, Owen had made his Great Britain bow at the World Para Athletics Championships - where he finished sixth - in 2019, having missed out on the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Paralympics.

However, in an exclusive interview with Press Sport before setting off to Tokyo, Owen said he was in the "best shape" of his career, having set a new PB of three minutes and 52.09 seconds in July's BMC Gold Standard Races in Stretford, Manchester.

Not only was that time a new PB, but it was also the fastest recorded over the 1500m distance by a British or European runner.

READ MORE: Owen's ready to run the 'race of his life' in Tokyo

Although he didn't better that time in Tokyo, an outstanding run of 3:54.57 saw him hold off the challenge of Alexandr Rabotnitskii, of the Russian Paralympic Committee, and Italy's Ndiaga Dieng, to become Paralympic champion.

Ahead of the Games, Owen described competing in Tokyo as a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity", and said: "My goal is just to try and get a medal. I feel like I'm doing well in training and everybody's keeping me moving.

"I just need to go out and run the race of my life and, if I'm knackered at the end, at least I've tried."

His coach at Fife AC, Steve Doig, noted: ""Two weeks after he'd been selected, he ran 3:52, which is the fastest ever by a Briton, and it's the fastest ever by a European. But, the way para sport's set up, it's the quickest by a European but it's not a European record because it wasn't in a world para competition. It has to be a sanctioned competition for records to stand.

"The hope in Tokyo would be that he'll run a PB again, so break the British record, and hopefully that's good enough for a medal."

Following his stunning victory, social media was awash with comments of congratulations, including from Dunfermline's former Commonwealth Games competitor, Gemma Sharp, who simply described his achievement as "amazing".

We will have much more on this story in next week's Press Sport.