Paralympics | Indian para-athletes win five medals in a late evening rush

PTI, Sep 4, 2024, 8:06 AM IST

Deepthi Jeevanji won bronze in the women's 400m T20 category (Source: X / @narendramodi)

Paris:) 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.