Indian para-athletes win 5 medals in a late evening rush
Sharad Kumar and Mariyappan Thangavelu won silver and bronze respectively in the men's high jump T63 while Ajeet Singh and Sundar Singh Gurjar took the second and third sports in the javelin throw F46 final
PTI
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Sharad Kumar and Mariyappan Thangavelu won silver and bronze respectively in the men's high jump T63 in Paralympics in Paris
Paris, 3 Sept
Indians won silver and bronze in
both men's high jump T63 and javelin throw F46 after Deepthi Jeevanji's bronze
in the women's 400m T20 category as the country's track and field athletes
clinched five medals at the Paralympic Games here on Tuesday.
Sharad Kumar and Mariyappan
Thangavelu won silver and bronze respectively in the men's high jump T63 while
Ajeet Singh and Sundar Singh Gurjar took the second and third sports in the
javelin throw F46 final.
The 32-year-old Kumar cleared 1.88m
while the 29-year-old Thangavelu's best effort was 1.85m. World record holder
Frech Ezra of the USA won the gold. T63 classification is for athletes with
single through knee or above knee limb deficiency.
Both Kumar and Thangavelu were T42
athletes who have single above-the-knee amputations or a disability that is
comparable. T63 classification is for athletes with single through knee or
above knee limb deficiency competing with a prosthesis.
T63 and T42 athletes can be
combined in a single event and that was what happened on Tuesday. Gold winner
Ezra is a T63 athlete and he competed with a prosthesis.
In fact, Kumar's 1.88m effort is a
Paralympic record in T42, bettering the earlier 1.86m set by Thangavelu. In the
Tokyo Paralympics three years ago, Kumar had won bronze while reigning world
champion Thangavelu had clinched a silver. It was a sort or reversal here on
Tuesday.
Ajeet upstaged world record holder
Gurjar (64.96m) with a fifth-round throw of 65.62m. Guillermo Gonzalez Varona
of Cuba won gold with 66.16m. It was Gurjar's second consecutive bronze in the
Paralympics as he had bagged the medal of same colour in Tokyo also three years
ago.
F46 classification is for athletes
with arm deficiency, impaired muscle power or impaired passive range of
movement in arms, with athletes competing in a standing position.
Earlier in the day, India's world
champion Deepthi came up short of her best timing as she won a bronze medal in
the women's 400m T20 category final race. Deepthi, who turns 21 later this
month, clocked 55.82 seconds to finish behind Yuliia Shuliar (55.16 seconds) of
Ukraine and world record holder Aysel Onder (55.23) of Turkey.
T20 category is meant for athletes
with intellectual impairment. Deepthi had come into Paris Paralympics as a
strong contender for the gold after a top-place finish at the World
Para-Athletics Championships in May in Japan where she had clocked the-then
world record of 55.07 seconds.
Turkish runner Onder smashed
Deepthi's world record during the heats on Monday with a time of 54.96 seconds.
Onder had finished second behind Deepthi in the 2024 World Para-Athletics
Championships in May.
Born in Muzaffarpur in Bihar, Kumar
suffered paralysis of his left leg after being administered a spurious polio
drug during a local eradication campaign at the age of two. He is a Masters
degree holder in International Relations from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru
University. He is a product of Delhi's Modern School and Kirorimal College.
Kumar took up high jump when he was
in class 7 at the St Paul's School in Darjeeling. He said some of his teachers
were against him taking up the sport. He had trained for three years in Ukraine
from 2017 to prepare for the Paralympics.
Hailing from Salem district in
Tamil Nadu, Thangavelu was raised by his daily-wage labourer mother who also
sells vegetables after his father abandoned the family.
At the age of five, Mariyappan
suffered permanent disability in his right leg when he was run over by a drunk
bus driver while walking to school. Before taking up sport, he would do the job
of newspaper hawker and work at construction sites to help his mother run the
family.
Deepthi, born to daily-wage
labourer parents in Kalleda village in the Warangal district of Telangana,
became the second Indian to win a medal in a track event at the Paralympics
after Preethi Pal.
On Sunday, Preethi had created
history as she became the first Indian woman track and field athlete to win two
medals at the Paralympics. The 23-year-old Preethi bagged a bronze in the 200m
T35 category with a personal best time of 30.01 seconds. She had also won a
bronze in the 100m T35 category on Friday.
For a long time, Deepthi's parents
were taunted by fellow villagers for having a "mentally impaired" child.
They were at the receiving end of taunts from the villagers, who would often
say that she would never get married since she was "mentally
impaired".
At the age of 15, Deepthi was first
spotted by N Ramesh, an Athletics Federation of India coach under the payrolls
of the Sports Authority of India.
Deepthi, who was making her
Paralympics debut, had won the 400m T20 gold in the Hangzhou Asian Games last
year with the then Asian record of 56.69 seconds.
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