Dame Sarah Storey wins because she goes the extra mile. She travelled to Paris, with children in tow, in May to check out the time trial course on which she won a fifth successive Paralympic gold medal on Wednesday.

She was stunned to find it was just 14.1km in length — almost 8km shorter than any course she had raced before.

She wrote to the Paralympic organisers to protest, observing competitors needed something longer and tougher to test themselves and project the quality of their sport. No reply.

While most of the men in her category raced two laps of the course at Clichy-sur-Bois, virtually all the women were limited to one. Blink and you would have missed her.

Storey warmed up in the dark, raced not long after 8am and by 8.30am had won gold. She said the disparity represented sexism and that the women’s course had been ‘appalling’.

Dame Sarah Storey earned her 18th Paralympic gold medal with time trial success in Paris

Storey stormed to gold at her ninth Paralympic Games, before hitting out at the course length

‘This is the shortest Paralympic time trial we’ve ever had,’ Storey said. ‘It’s a real shame because you don’t showcase para sport in the way you want to. There’s plenty of time in the day for us to do two laps, like the men. At championships you expect to race a minimum of 22km.

‘I really hope they never do this to the women again.’

Seven of the 12 men’s races and one of the seven women’s time trials on Wednesday were over the longer distance. Paralympic organisers seem to have bungled by trying to cram 19 time-trial events into a single day — four-and-a-half hours of competition, including an unfathomable three-hour break.

But no-one from the organising committee or the UCI governing body gave an explanation.

Limiting visibility for women’s races is gross complacency by the organisers, though, particularly given the sense that these Paralympics are struggling for the same cut-through that they have enjoyed since the 2012 Games in London.

Storey claimed the short course was a 'real shame' and did not help to showcase Para-sport

Storey’s time trial was more competitive here than the ones at her four previous Paralympics. The 46-year-old, who has no functioning left hand, was seven seconds behind France’s Heidi Gaugain at the 5.8km checkpoint, but eventually won by 4.69sec — 32 years on from her Paralympic debut at Barcelona in 1992. Gaugain, 27 years Storey’s junior, took silver.

Storey’s compatriot Blaine Hunt, who finished 11th in the men’s event over 28.2km, backed her. ‘If there was equality, that would be great,’ he said. ‘I’m all for things being brought together and being equal and I’ll fight for that until the end.’

But another Brit, Fran Brown, did not agree. ‘We are capable of riding a bit further, but we all did the same course, so make the most of it,’ she said after taking silver in the C1-3 category.