A visually impaired Kapil Parmar became India’s first Paralympic medallist in judo with a bronze in the men’s 60kg (J1) category as the country’s para-athletes achieved their stated goal of 25 medals on Thursday, September 5.
The 24-year-old Parmar, who was making his Games debut, defeated Brazil’s Elielton de Oliveira 10-0 in the play-off, dominating his opponent throughout the contest to clinch a historic podium finish.
A very memorable sporting performance and a special medal!
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 5, 2024
Congratulations to Kapil Parmar, as he becomes the first-ever Indian to win a medal in Judo at the Paralympics. Congrats to him for winning a Bronze in the Men's 60kg J1 event at the #Paralympics2024! Best wishes for his… pic.twitter.com/JYtpEf2CtI
India’s medal count rose to 25, including five gold, nine silver and 11 bronze. The nation of over a billion people is placed 14th in the overall standings, behind Uzbekistan, which has 16 medals but is placed above India owing to its higher gold count of six.
In its pre-Games estimate, the Paralympic Committee of India (PCI) had stated that it was hoping to win at least 25 medals from the quadrennial showpiece.
That target has been met and the final count could well be higher even though the hopes of achieving a double-digit gold medal tally could remain unfulfilled.
Parmar’s medal was among the least expected from the mega-event.
However, it was not entirely a surprise given that he won a silver medal at the Para-Asian Games last year besides being a gold-medallist from the 2019 Commonwealth Championships. The J1 category is reserved for visually impaired judokas.
Son of a taxi driver, Parmar’s eye-sight deteriorated progressively after he was electrocuted as a nine-year-old while trying to fetch water from a pump in the fields of his village in Madhya Pradesh. He was discovered in an unconscious state by locals and was hospitalised in Bhopal. He spent six months in coma before making a slow and painful recovery.
What remained intact was his love for judo, a sport that he picked up while in school, and with the help of his coaches Bhagwan Das and Manoj, he entered para-sports.
But the limited financial means of his family meant that Parmar had to run a tea stall with one of his four brothers to support himself at one stage of his life.
He trains at the Indian Blind and Para Judo Academy in Lucknow.
Simran ends 4th in 100m (T12) final
Indian sprinter Simran was undone by a slow start as she finished fourth in the women’s 100m (T12) final after clocking 12.31sec in the final.
Accompanied by her guide Abhay Singh, the 24-year-old reigning world champion from New Delhi had qualified second with a timing of 12.33sec behind Germany’s Katrin Mueller-Rottgardt in semifinal 2.
Simran, who was born prematurely with visual impairment, was ranked third overall in the semis. However, despite marginal improvement in her timings, she could not finish inside the medal bracket.
Cuba’s Omara Durand clinched the gold with a season’s best performance of 11.81sec.
Heartbreak in archery
Individual gold-medallist Harvinder Singh and his partner Pooja Jatyan looked good for a mixed team recurve open bronze, but it was not to be as the duo lost a shoot-off to Slovenia’s Ziva Lavrinc and Dejan Fabcic 4-5 inthe play-off.
It was an opportunity for Harvinder to script history after becoming India’s first archery gold-medallist on Wednesday. The Indian led 4-2 going into the final set but lost the plot thereafter, allowing the Slovenian combination to first draw level before closing the match in the shoot-off.
Hailing from a family of farmers from Haryana, the 33-year-old Harvinder was just one and a half years old, when he contracted dengue and due to the side effects of some injections administered to him, his legs were left impaired.
Also read: Harvinder Singh’s historic archery gold in Paralympics marks a new era for India
Pooja, 27, had on Tuesday lost out in the individual quarterfinals.
In 1997, when she was just two months old, Pooja became a victim of medical negligence when she was administered a wrong injection for high fever, resulting in polio in her left leg.
Shooters off target yet again
In Chateauroux, Indian shooters failed to make the final of the mixed 50m rifle prone (SH1) competition.
Mona Agarwal, 36, the winner of the bronze medal in the 10m air rifle (SH1) competition at the Games, finished 30th with an aggregate of 610.5 across six series.
Sidhartha Babu, who had ended 28th in the mixed 10m air rifle prone (SH1) qualification a few days back, too could not raise the level of his game to finish 22nd with a total of 615.8.
