Triple treat by para stars

Indians make it a National Sports Day to remember with three medals as table tennis ace Bhavinaben Patel and discus thrower Vinod Kumar secure silvers, and high jumper Nishad Kumar nets bronze

It turned it to be a super Sunday for Team India at the Paralympic Games as high jumper Nishad Kumar and discus thrower Vinod Kumar clinched a silver and a bronze respectively with Asian records, adding to table tennis champ Bhavinaben Patel’s silver medal effort earlier in the day. 

Nishad, 21, a farmer’s son from Himachal Pradesh, cleared 2.06m to win the silver in the T47 category before Vinod, 41, a Border Security Force soldier, whose father fought in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, produced a best throw of 19.91m to clinch a bronze in F52 event. The two athletics medals came after Patel gave India its first medal in the Games by grabbing a silver in the women’s singles table tennis Class 4 event. 

India’s Nishad Kumar clears 2.06m during the high jump final at the Tokyo Paralympics yesterday to win the silver medal

Record medal haul possible

The 24-member Indian athletics team is hoping for a rich haul of medals—at least 10— and this double success gave the country enough reason to smile on National Sports Day.

Nishad, whose right hand got cut by a grass-cutting machine at his family’s farm when he was just eight, cleared the same height of 2.06m with American Dallas Wise, who was also awarded a silver. Another American, Roderick Townsend, won the gold with a world record jump of 2.15m. The second Indian in the fray, Ram Pal, finished fifth with a best jump of 1.94m. T47 class is meant for athletes with a unilateral upper limb impairment resulting in some loss of function at the shoulder, 
elbow and wrist.

India’s Vinod Kumar during the discus throw final yesterday

Nishad had also contracted COVID-19 earlier this year while training at the SAI Centre in Bengaluru. Nishad had won a gold medal in the men’s high jump T46/47 event at the Fazza World Para Athletics Grand Prix in Dubai earlier this year. He began competing in para athletics in 2009.

Meanwhile, Vinod also set an Asian record while winning the bronze medal. Piotr Kosewicz (20.02m) of Poland and Velimir Sandor (19.98m) of Croatia won the silver and bronze respectively. Vinod injured his legs while training after joining the BSF, falling off a cliff in Leh, leaving him bed-ridden for close to a decade during which he also lost his parents. The F52 classification is for athletes with impaired muscle power, restricted range of movement, limb deficiency or leg length difference, with athletes competing in seated position. It also applies to cervical cord injury, spinal cord injury, amputation, and functional disorder. 

Historic silver in TT

Earlier in the day, Patel won a silver in women’s singles table tennis Class 4 event, becoming the first paddler and only the second Indian woman to win a medal at the Games. She went down 0-3 (7-11, 5-11, 6-11) to World No. 1 Ying Zhou of China in the gold medal match. The Table Tennis Federation of India announced a R31 lakh cash reward for Patel, who is now keen to meet her childhood idol Sachin Tendulkar. “Bhavina wants to meet Tendulkar and show him her medal. He’s her idol. We are trying to contact him and fix a meeting once we return to India,” her husband Nikul Patel said.

Archers disappoint

Meanwhile, it wasn’t great going for India’s archers as their challenge ended in the compound mixed pair open section after the duo of Rakesh Kumar and Jyoti Baliyan made a quarter-final exit. The sixth-seeds suffered a poor start misfiring into the six-ring in the first end which proved to be decisive as they lost to their Turkish opponents, Oznur Cure and Bulent Korkmaz,151-153. India’s challenge in the women’s compound open section also ended after Jyoti lost to Kerrie-Louise Leonard of Ireland 141-137 in the first round.

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