Avani gets bronze, India add three medals
Tokyo seems heaven as shooter Avani scripts history again, Harvinder bags first archery medal for India
Tokyo, Sept. 3: Shooter Avani Lekhara scripted history once again, teen high-jumper Praveen Kumar knocked off an Asian record for his silver while Harvinder Singh became India’s first archer to finish on podium as the country’s Paralympians raised the bar higher with unparalleled performances in the ongoing Games here on Friday.
India picked up three medals on the day and the overall tally rose to 13, including two gold, six silver and five bronze. In a nutshell, the country’s best ever Paralympics continued to get better.
It started with Praveen’s silver in the morning. The 18-year-old, competing in his debut Games, clinched the silver medal in the men’s high jump
T64 event, setting a new Asian record with a 2.07m jump to finish behind Great Britain’s Jonathan Broom-Edwards, who notched his season’s best effort of 2.10m for gold.
This was a personal best performance for him and his first major medal since taking up the sport in 2019. The teenager is a Noida resident and is now the youngest medal winner in the Indian contingent here.
Then came Lekhara and scripted history for the second time. The 19-yearold trailblazer claimed the 50m Rifle 3 Position
SH1 bronze to add to an unprecedented gold she had secured earlier.
In the fiercely contested finals, Lekhara totalled
445.9 to finish ahead of Ukraine’s Iryna Shchetnik, who let slip her grip on the medal spot with a poor third shot of
9.9 in the elimination.
She had become the first Indian woman to win a Paralympic gold by claiming the top honours in the
10m air rifle standing SH1 event. That was also the first ever shooting medal that India had won in the Games.
Prior to her, Joginder Singh Sodhi was the lone Indian to win multiple medals in the same edition of the Games when he fetched one silver and two bronze medals in the 1984 Paralympics.
And in the evening Harvinder etched his name in the history books with a gritty performance. An economics scholar from the Punjabi University, Patiala, Singh collected three shoot-off wins on the day starting with his triumphs in the opening rounds. The last of his three shoot-off wins came against Korean Kim Min Su in the bronze play-off.— PTI