India’s medal tally hits double digit with the addition of three more medals on the seventh day of Tokyo Paralympics today. Para-athlete Mariyappan Thangavelu wins silver and his teammate Sharad Kumar clinches bronze medal in High Jump T-63 event, and shooter Singhraj Adhana claims bronze medal in the P1 men’s 10m air pistol SH1 event. With two gold, five silver and three bronze medals, India stands at 30th position in the medal chart.
Mariyappan jumped 1.86m high and Kumar scaled 1.83m to win silver and bronze respectively while American gold winner Sam Grewe had a 1.88m high jump. Third Indian in the event Varun Singh Bhatti, who had won bronze medal at Rio Paralympics 2016 finished seventh as he failed to clear 1.77m.
T63 category is for athletes with lower limb deficiency or leg length difference.
Adhana shot a total of 216.8 to finish the event at third position after qualifying for the eight-man final as teh sixth best shooter. But his teammate Manish Narwal, who entered the final by topping the qualification round, finished at seventh position.
In this category pistol is held with one hand only and the athletes in SH1 category have an impairment that has affected one arm and/or the legs, for example resulting from amputationa of spinal cord injuries. P1 is a classification for men’s 10m air pistol competition.
Mariyappan, 26-year-old, had won a gold medal at Rio Paralympics five years ago. The Tamil Nadu athlete was only 5, when his right leg was crushed under a bus and he suffered a permanent disability. His single mother, who was first working as a daily wage labourer and latter, as a vegetable vendor, raised him through abject poverty as his father abandoned them.
Kumar, who hails from Bihar, suffered paralysis in his left leg after he was administered spurious polio vaccine when he was only 2.