Field of gold

Navdeep Singh’s silver medal was upgraded to gold after Iran’s Beit Sayah Sadegh was disqualified following a dramatic men’s javelin throw F41 final at the Paris Paralympics. This is India’s first-ever gold medal in the men’s javelin F41 category. Starting the competition with a foul, the 23-year-old para-athlete from Haryana, who had finished fourth at the Tokyo Games three years ago, came up with a throw of 46.39 metres with his second attempt, propelling him to second place. But it was his third throw that electrified the stadium.

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With a monstrous throw of 47.32 metres, Navdeep shattered the Paralympics record and surged into the lead, only for Sadegh to better the Indian’s mark and clinch the gold with a record-breaking effort of 47.64 metres in his fifth attempt. However, the Iranian was disqualified after the end of the final, leading to the Indian athlete taking the top spot. The F41 category is for athletes who are of short stature.

Redemption for Simran

Braving all odds with a steely resolve, Simran won the bronze medal in the women’s 200m T12 final, living up to the expectations of a podium finish after missing it by a whisker in the 100m dash.

Reigning world champion Simran finished third with a personal best time of 24.75 seconds in what was a culmination of a journey that was fraught with obstacles right from the day she was born.

Cuba’s Omara Durand Elias claimed gold in 23.62, while Venezuela’s Paola Alejandra Perez Lopez bagged silver with an effort of 24.19.

The T12 classification in the Paralympics is for athletes with visual impairments.

The 24-year-old Simran was born prematurely and spent the next 10 weeks in an incubator where it was discovered that she is visually impaired.

With the race for the gold medal becoming a contest between Omara and Paola, Simran was engaged in a battle for the bronze with Iran’s Hajar Safarzadeh, who had a better reaction time than the Indian sprinter.

Sema wins bronze

Landmine blast survivor Hokato Sema came up with his career-best throw of 14.65 metres to secure a bronze medal for the country in the men’s F57 shot put category.

The 40-year-old Dimapur-born army man, who had won the bronze medal at the Hangzhou Para Games last year, started with a mediocre throw of 13.88m before he hit a purple patch.

The only athlete from Nagaland who is part of the Indian contingent at the Paralympics touched the 14m mark with his second throw and then improved further with a heave of 14.40m.

However, Sema, who lost his left leg in a landmine blast while taking part in an anti-terrorist operation in Jammu & Kashmir’s Chowkibal in 2002, achieved his best throw with his fourth attempt, surpassing his personal best of 14.49m on way to the bronze medal.

Iran’s Yasin Khosravi, the 31-year-old two-time world champion and Hangzhou Para Games gold medallist, clinched the top spot with a Paralympics record of 15.96m. He missed rewriting his own world mark of 16.01m by just five centimetres. Brazil’s Thiago Dos Santos took the silver with his best throw of 15.06m.

Sema, who was encouraged by a senior army official at the Pune-based Artificial Limb Centre to take up shot put after seeing his fitness, took up the sport in 2016 at the age of 32 and was soon competing in the National Para Athletics Championships in Jaipur the same year.