The 13-day Tokyo Paralympics 2020 has finally come to an end, with the closing ceremony drawing the curtains at the National Stadium overseen by Crown Prince Akishino, the brother of Emperor Naruhito on Sunday.
The closing ceremony was entitled “Harmonious Cacophony” and involved both able-bodied actors and others with disabilities. The theme was described by organisers as a “world inspired by the Paralympics, one where differences shine.”
Avani Lekhara was India’s flag bearer during the athletes’ parade. She led India’s contingent, a country which registered its largest-ever medal haul at the Games, finishing with five gold, eight silver and six bronze medals. Having registered 19 medals in total, the Indian Paralympic Team crossed its previous best tally of four medals at the 2016 Paralympics. Nearly half (8) of India’s haul this time came from the track-and-field arena.
The Tokyo Olympics filled our hearts with pride and joy, thanks to the contingent of athletes whose focus was only directed towards clinching those medals. Here is a list of all the Indian athletes who made the Paralympics 2020 memorable:
1. Bhavinaben Patel
India won its first medal of the Games through Bhavinaben Patel, who brought home silver in table tennis women’s singles (Class 4). She is the second Indian woman to win a medal at the Paralympics after she signed off with a silver following a 0-3 loss to world number one Chinese paddler Ying Zhou in the women’s singles table tennis.
Deepa Malik, who is the current president of Paralympic Committee of India (PCI), was the first Indian woman to win a medal in the Paralympic Games when she had claimed a silver in shotput at Rio five years back.
Patel, who was diagnosed with polio when she was 12 months old, started playing the sport 13 years ago at the Blind People’s Association at Vastrapur area of Ahmedabad where she was a student of ITI for people with disabilities. There, she saw visually impaired children playing table tennis and decided to take up the sport.
2. Nishad Kumar
On August 29, Nishad (22) won the silver medal in the men’s high jump T47 event, after clearing 2.09 metres in the Tokyo Paralympics and also set an Asian record.
He took up para-athletics in 2009 and went on to claim the bronze medal in the men’s high jump T47 category in the 2019 World Para Athletics. By winning the bronze medal, he qualified for the Tokyo Paralympics.
An alumni of DAV College, Sector 10, Chandigarh, he trained under athletics coach Naseem Ahmed and Vikram at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula.
Nishad had lost his right hand to a tragic accident at the age of eight when he had accidentally put his hand in a fodder-cutting machine. His father Rashpal is a mason and mother Pushpa Devi is a housewife. They live in their ancestral Badaun village in Amb.
3. Sundar Singh Gurjar
Sundar Singh Gurjarwona bronze in javelin throw F46 event with a throw of 64.01m. The 25-year-old Gurjar from Rajasthan’s Karauli used to compete in the general category until 2015, when he met with an accident while fixing a metal sheet fell on him at his friend’s house that led to the amputation of his left wrist.
The Jaipur-based Gurjar had won gold in the 2017 and 2019 World Para Athletics Championships.
4. Yogesh Kathuniya
Discus thrower Yogesh Kathuniya, who trained for the Paralympics without a coach, won a silver as he sent the disc to a best distance of 44.38m in his sixth and last attempt to clinch the medal.
The 24-year-old is a BCom graduate from New Delhi’s Kirorimal College. Son of an army man, Kathuniya suffered a paralytic attack at the age of eight which left him with coordination impairments in his limbs.
He won a bronze medal in the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai with a best throw of 42.51m which also booked him a Tokyo berth. He created a world record in F36 category in his first ever international competition in 2018 at the Para-athletics Grand Prix in Berlin.
5. Devendra Jhajharia
The 40-year-old javelin thrower, already India’s greatest Paralympian after winning gold medals in the 2004 and 2016 Games, pulled off a new personal best throw of 64.35m for the silver in F46 classification.
F46 classification is for athletes with arm deficiency, impaired muscle power or impaired passive range of movement in arms. Jhajharia makes this cut owing to the left hand he lost after being electrocuted as an eight-year-old.
6. Avani Lekhara
19-year-old shooter Avani Lekhara, who won a gold medal in 10m air rifle and a bronze medal in 50m rifle at the Tokyo Paralympics, led the Indian contingent by carrying the tri-colour during the Closing Ceremony of the Games. She is the first woman to win a shooting medal and a gold at the Games.
A car accident in 2012 had left Avani Lekhara wheelchair-bound. Lekhara, who sustained spinal cord injuries in a car accident in 2012, finished with a world record equalling total of 249.6, which is also a new Paralympic record. She started shooting in the summer vacations of 2015 when her father took her to the shooting range. She started it as a hobby and made it all the way to the Games.
She is only the fourth Indian athlete to win a Paralympics gold after swimmer Murlikant Petkar (1972), javelin thrower Devendra Jhajharia (2004 and 2016) and high jumper Mariyappan Thangavelu (2016).
7. Sumit Antil
Javelin thrower Sumit Antil of Khewra village, Sonepat, bagged the gold in the F64 category and created a new world record by throwing the javelin at 68.55 m in the Tokyo Paralympics.
The 23-year-old lost his left leg below the knee after he was involved in a motorbike accident in 2015.
A student of Delhi’s Ramjas College, Antil was an able-bodied wrestler before his accident which led to the amputation of his leg below the knee. A para-athlete in his village initiated him to the sport in 2018. He also competed against Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra in the able-bodied Indian Grand Prix series 3 on March 5 in Patiala.
8. Singhraj Adana
39-year-old Adana, who is afflicted with polio, won a bronze in the men’s 10m air pistol SH1 and a silver in mixed 50m pistol SH1. The shooter from Haryana’s Bahadurgarh took to the sport only four years ago and had served as the chairman of the Sainik School in Faridabad.
His grandfather was part of the country’s freedom movement and served in the British Indian Army during the Second World War.
9. Sharad Kumar
Sharad Kumar bagged a bronze medal in the Men’s High Jump T42 classification at the Tokyo Paralympics. The 29-year-old Patna-born athlete, who jumped to 1.83m to win the bronze, had suffered meniscus dislocation (a type of knee injury) a night before the final and had wept all through the night.
A product of Delhi’s Modern School and Kirorimal College, Kumar made his international debut back in 2010 at the Asian Para Games in Guangzhou. Also a Sports Authority of India coach, he had trained for three years in Ukraine from 2017 to prepare for the Paralympics.
At the age of two, Kumar had suffered paralysis of his left leg after being administered a spurious polio drug during a local eradication campaign.
10. Mariyappan Thangavelu
Mariyappan, who won a gold in the 2016 Rio Paralympics, bagged a silver this time around in T63 category with a best jump of 1.86m. He had missed out on being the flag-bearer at the Opening Ceremony because he was identified as a close contact with a Covid-19 person.
When he was five years old, Mariyappan was hit by a bus while walking to school. His right leg was gravely injured and he turned to sport after his physical education teacher urged him to take up high jump.
Mariyappan, until class 11, would jump on top of a truckload of sand until he was spotted by India coach Satyanarayana, who took him to Bangalore. He was shaped into a world-beater at the SAI facility before he eventually won the gold medal at the Rio Paralympics. Shortly after the Games, it was announced that Mariyappan’s life story would be the subject of a feature film.
11. Praveen Kumar
18-year-old Praveen Kumar clinched the silver medal in the men’s high jump T64 event. Competing in his debut Paralympics, Kumar set a new Asian record with a 2.07m jump to finish behind Great Britain’s Jonathan Broom-Edwards. This was Praveen’s first major medal since taking up the sport in 2019.
Son of a poor farmer from a village near Jewar in Uttar Pradesh, Praveen came to know about the Paralympics from a Google search.
In 2018, he got in touch with coach Satyapal seeking guidance. But the coach had some reservations about the youngster’s short height. Praveen’s congenital impairment affects the bones that connect his hip to his left leg. “His left leg is the impaired one, but his right leg has very strong muscles. So despite his short stature I took him under my training,” Satyapal said about his ward who stands at around 5’5”.
12. Manish Narwal
Manish Narwal won a gold in the mixed 50m pistol SH1 event setting a Paralympics record (218.2) in the final.
Narwal had shot a world record score in the mixed 50m pistol SH1 event (229.1 points) at the Al Ain Para Shooting World Cup in March. At the Asian Para Games in 2018, Narwal was the only Indian shooter to win gold, in 10m air pistol where he shot a junior world record. He also won silver in the P4 category of 50m mixed free pistol. He continued to take big strides, winning three bronze medals in P1 and P4 (individual and team) in the 2019 Sydney Para Shooting World Championships. He received the Arjuna Award last year.
Before Narwal became a shooter—he has a congenital impairment in his right hand—who habitually broke records, he was known as a quiet boy in Ballabgarh, Haryana. He tried many sports—athletics, football and badminton—before taking up shooting in 2015.
13. Manoj Sarkar
India shuttler Manoj Sarkar won a bronze medal after defeating Japan’s Daisuke Fujihara in the men’s singles SL3 event. The 31-year-old had contracted polio at the age of one.
Sarkar began to play badminton at the age of five, and played inter-school competitions against able-bodied shuttlers till the 11th grade. He started to compete in para-badminton events in 2011, winning a gold medal in the SL3 singles at the 2016 Asian Championships in Beijing.
He also received the Arjuna Award in 2018, and was named Para Sportsman of the Year at the Sportstar Aces Awards in 2019.
14. Pramod Bhagat
Pramod Bhagat scripted history as he became India’s first-ever para-badminton gold medalist at the Games. The 33-year-old won the gold medal in men’s singles badminton SL3 event.
Bhagat, who had contracted polio when he was 5 years old, is one of the best para shuttlers in the country with 45 international medals under his belt, including four world championship gold medals and a gold and a bronze in 2018 Asian Para Games.
15. Suhas Yathiraj
The 38-year-old IAS officer with a leg impairment, clinched the silver medal at the ongoing Tokyo Paralympics after losing the final match against France’s Lucas Mazur in the badminton Men’s Singles SL4 event.
Though he always loved sports but started playing professionally 6 years ago when he was DM of Azamgarh. In 2016, he became the first bureaucrat to represent India in a sport internationally. He made it to record books by clinching the gold medal for India at the Asian Para Badminton Championships, 2016, held in China.
16. Krishna Nagar
Krishna became the 2nd Indian shutter after Pramod Bhagat to win a gold medal in badminton. The 22-year-old shuttler from Jaipur defeated Hong Kong’s Chu Man Kai in the men’s singles SH6 class final to retain his unbeaten run at the Games.
The Games truly lived up to an old marketing slogan coined to promote the event — “The Olympics is where heroes are made. The Paralympics is where heroes come.”
