Ellie Cole has made Australian Paralympics history, hours after Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced .
Cole swam the backstroke leg of the 4x100m medley team that won bronze on Thursday night, taking the six-time gold medallist to 17 career Paralympic medals.
Speaking to SBS News from Tokyo, she described the feat as "surreal".
"My biggest dream when I was a junior athlete was just to win one Paralympic medal. It didn’t even have to be a gold medal, I just really wanted just one. So to finish off my Paralympic career with 17, it’s definitely something I never dreamed of," the 29-year-old said.
"At the end of the day, all I really wanted to do in my swimming career was just to dive in and swim as fast as I could for Australia and fortunately for me, at the end of 17 of those races, there was a medal waiting for me.
"The medals are just the icing on the cake, but representing Australia is the cake."
Her silver and bronze medals in Tokyo helped make her Australia's most decorated female Paralympian, with one more medal than retired swimmer Priya Cooper, who won nine gold.
'It made me feel valued'
The federal government's move to ensure Paralympians receive the same financial medal rewards as their Olympic counterparts is an especially poignant one for Cole.
"The first thing it made me feel, when I heard the announcement about parity between Paralympic and Olympic swimmers, was just valued - probably equally valued as an athlete for the first time in my entire life," she said.
"I’ve been on the Australian swim team now for 16 years and I’ve always felt valued as an athlete, but not equally.
"Over the last few years, training alongside Cate and Bronte Campbell, I felt very valued in that program but when they went off to the Olympics and I went off to the Paralympics it was a different story.
"So to have our Prime Minister stand up yesterday and tell the entire country that he values us as athletes and that he sees us as athletes made me very emotional, it was something that I’ve been working towards in my career for 16 years."
Set to retire from the pool after the Tokyo Games, she described the new way forward with medal parity as "a poetic finish" to a 16-year career.
"Future Paralympic athletes won’t ever have to feel the way that our Paralympic athletes have felt in the past, they are just as equally important to our sporting landscape as any athlete from our country," she said.
"Feeling different from the person standing next to you is never a nice way to feel, so any way that we can bring inclusion and diversity into culture is such an important step forward for Australia.
"[It was] a very historic day - I’m going to write it down somewhere, stick it on my fridge, maybe tattoo it on my body, it was a very nice day."
Rachael Watson, Will Martin and Ben Hance also had record-breaking performances to snare gold in the pool on Thursday.
At the main stadium, Vanessa Low broke her own world record as she won the T63 long jump.
But arguably the most significant news for the Paralympic team on Thursday happened nearly 8,000km away in Canberra.
The prime minister announced the federal government would reward each Australian Paralympics medal in Tokyo with the same money that the Australian Olympic Committee provides for the Olympic team - $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze.
Paralympics Australia hailed it as a landmark move towards equity in sport and wheelchair tennis great Dylan Alcott called it a win for people power.
"How cool is this news. It's because of all of you backing the Paralympic Games and making some noise to make this change happen," Alcott tweeted.
"We appreciate the support of the Australian public so much, and hope the last week has put some smiles on some faces back home!"
Thursday's four golds took the Australian team's overall tally to 17, with 23 silver and 25 bronze, and they remain eighth on the medal table.
But the most historic medal of the day was Cole's bronze in the relay with Kiera Stephens, Emily Beecroft and Isabella Vincent.
The four-time Paralympian will most likely retire now, with Thursday's relay the last event on her Tokyo program.
"I spent a very emotional afternoon and so I kept sitting at the warm-up pool crying," she told Channel Seven.
"I was 'pull yourself together, you have to do this for your country'.
"It just goes to show how much racing for your country, racing for your team in particular, can really put a firework up your ... you know ..."
Martin broke his own world record twice to take out the S9 100m butterfly event, his third Tokyo gold medal.
Hance set a Paralympic record in winning the S14 100m backstroke and Watson did the same in the S4 50m freestyle.
At the track, Low's world record capped a romantic Australian recruiting coup.
She won the same event in Rio, when competing for Germany.
Low switched nationalities and moved to Australia so she could see more of her husband Scott Reardon, who won gold in the T42 100m at Rio and finished fifth in the T63 100m final earlier this week.
With additional reporting by SBS News' Jennifer Scherer.
