India scripts history at Tokyo Paralympics

Tokyo, Sep, 05: India has created history at the Tokyo Paralympics, returning home with as many as 19 medals, their best-ever tally in a single edition of the Paralympics by far. With as many as 5 gold medals, 8 silver medals and 6 bronze medals, finishing inside the top 25 at the Para Games in the Japanese capital.
India’s tally of 19 is also the country’s best at a multi-spot world event, going past the tally of 13 registered at the Summer Youth Olympics in 2018. The record tally in Paralympics comes after the able-bodied athletes scripted history at the Tokyo Olympics, winning 7 medals, their best-ever tally at the Olympics.
India finished inside the top 25 in the medal table at the Tokyo Paralympics, going past their previous-best bby 15 medals.
From its first-ever Paralympics in 1968 to 2016, India had won 12 medals but the bar has been set high by the para-athletes as they return home with a staggering tally of 19. In fact, India had only 19 athletes at the Rio Paralympics where they won 4 medals.
A lot was expected of India’s largest contingent at the Paralympics — a 54 strong unit — and the para-athletes lived up to the hype, winning medals at will in Tokyo.
It all started with a table tennis medal with Bhavinaben Patel becoming the first Indian to win a table tennis medal at the Paralympics. It ended with two badminton players winning medals as Krishna Nagar won a historic gold in the men’s singles SH6 category and Suhas Yathiraj, an IAS officer, winning silver in the SL4 category.