India have won a first ever Gold medal in Badminton at the Paralympics in Tokyo with Pramod Bhagat winning the final of the men’s singles SL3 against Daniel Bethell of Great Britain.
Pramod won in straight games 21-14, 21-17 in 45 minutes. This is the first time badminton has been part of the Paralympic Games. Pramod is also the Asian and World Champion.
Pramod, the 33-year-old from Bhubaneswar who contracted polio at age four, came back from a 4-9 deficit in the second game to claim victory.
Meanwhile on another court, Manoj Sarkar defeated local favourite Daisuke Fujihara 22-20, 21-13 in 47 minutes to take Bronze.
Manoj, ranked fourth in the world, trailed initially but fought back to win the first game 22-20 in 22 minutes. He then rode the momentum to win the second game 21-13 to win the bronze medal at the Yoyogi National Stadium.
Pramod, the top-ranked player in the world, is the reigning World Champion in SL3 class having won the title by beating Bathell in the final in Basel, Switzerland in 2019.
Pramod can add more medals to his collection on Sunday as he is in contention for a bronze in mixed doubles SL3-SU5 class. Pramod and Palak Kohli will play against Japan’s Daisuke Fujihara and Akiko Sugino for bronze on Sunday.
Initially, he competed against able-bodied players before getting into competitive para badminton in 2006.
He eventually emerged as 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.
He also had started his career as a badminton coach but took a break in 2019 to focus on Tokyo Paralympics qualification.
In 2019, he received the Arjuna Award and Biju Patnaik Award for Excellence in Sports in India.
Earlier in the day, Suhas Yathiraj and Krishna Nagar also sailed into the men’s singles finals of SL4 class and SH6 class respectively.
India now have 17 medals at the Tokyo Paralympics and also four gold medals at the campaign. It is also the second time on 4 August that India have had double podium finishes with shooters Manish Narwal and Singhraj Adhana taking Gold and Silver respectively in the shooting P4 Mixed 50m Pistol SH1 event.
PV Sindhu's silver medal in the 2016 Olympics at Rio de Janeiro was the previous best for India in the Olympics and Paralympics. Sindhu has also won a bronze medal at Tokyo 2020 Olympics last month.
(With inputs from PTI and IANS)
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