Praveen's record-breaking jump helps India hit a golden six in Paralympics

High jumper Praveen Kumar upgraded his Tokyo silver to a gold with a recordsmashing performance helping India nose ahead of the likes of Canada and Korea in the overall standings as the countrys paraathletes continued to defy projections in their bestever Paralympic performanceThe 21yearold from Noida who was born with a short leg jumped to a new Asian record of 208m in the T64 category which also featured athletes of T44 classificationHe clinched the top honours at the Paris Paralympics 2024 ahead of USAs Derek Loccident 206m and Uzbekistans Temurbek Giyazov 203mT64 is for athletes with movement moderately affected in one lower leg or the absence of one or both legs below the knee while T44 to which Praveen belongs is for athletes with movement affected at a low or moderate degree in one lower legThe countrys medal haul swelled to 26 including six gold nine silver and 11 bronze medals The performance surpasses all preGames projections and with one more day of competitions left it is expected to get betterAlso ReadPraveen Kumar clinches gold in menrsquos high jump T64 in ParisOpting to start from 189m Kumar aced seven jumps in his first attempt to put himself in pole position The bar was then raised to 210m with Kumar and Loccident fighting for the top spot but both failed to clear the markPraveen who was also the 2023 world championship bronzemedallist recorded not just an Asian record but his personal best performance tooHis impairment which is congenital affects the bones that connect his hip to his left legIn his formative years Kumar has confessed to grappling with feelings of inadequacyHe started playing sports to deal with his insecurities and found a passion for volleyball But his life changed when he took part in a high jump event at an ablebodied athletics competitionHe is the third high jumper after Sharad Kumar and Mariyappan Thangavelu to secure a medal in ParisSharad and Thangavelu won silver and bronze in the mens high jump T63 event on September 3Simran through to 200m semis Visually impaired sprinter Simran entered the 200m T12 semifinals after clocking 2541sec to top her heat race She is the reigning world champion in 200m and is accompanied by her guide Abhay Singh in the eventOn Thursday Simran had missed out on a medal in the womens 100m finishing fourth with a timing of 1231 seconds in the fourplayer finalSimran was born prematurely and spent the next 10 weeks in an incubator where it was discovered that she is visually impairedCanoers enter Paris Paralympics 2024 semifinals Indian canoers Prachi Yadav and Yash Kumar qualified for the semifinals of womens VL2 200m and mens KL1 200m events after finishing fourth and sixth in their respective heatWhile Prachi and Pooja Ojha clocked 10683s and 11609s in the womens vaa single 200m VL2 heat 1 and KL1 200m heat 2 respectively Yash came up with a timing of 10327s in mens KL 200m heatThe semifinals will take place on SaturdayWinner of each heat qualify directly to the final while the remainder goes to the semifinals The three fastest athlete of each semifinal make it to the finalKL1 classification is for athletes with no or extremely limited trunk function and no function in the legs while VL2 is for those with partial leg and trunk function able to sit up straight in the kayak but may require a highbacked seatWith agency inputs