Praveen Kumar Bags Silver Men’s High Jump After Scintillating Performance at Tokyo Paralympics as India’s Medal Tally Sees another Boost
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Praveen Kumar in action
The second to last day of athletics at the Tokyo Paralympics saw the men’s T64 high jump take place. India has been enjoying tremendous success at the Paralympics, notching up 10 medals already, with majority of those coming from athletics. With India’s 18-year-old Praveen Kumar in the mix, the nation hoped to add another medal to its tally.
The first jump at 1.83 was given a pass by several athletes, including the future gold medal winner Jonathan Broom-Edwards of Great Britain. Poland’s Maciej Lepiato along with Kumar also decided to skip this jump. Praveen attempted the next jump at 1.88m, which he cleared with ease and then went on to directly clear the 1.97m mark.
After this jump, since only the three afore mentioned athletes were remaining since all other failed to clear the mark, Praveen was assured of a medal in men’s T64 high jump. However, this was not the end of the competition, as Jonathan gave the indian an incredibly tough fight all the way till the end.
Praveen Kumar Bags Silver With Area Record and Personal Best
The 2.01m height saw Praveen and Lepiato miss the height in their first attempt, but clear it in their second, keeping both the athletes in contention. Jonathan occupied the provisional gold medal spot after clearing the jump in his very first attempt.
The next height of 2.04m was also cleared by all the athletes, and they moved on to the next one, where the bar was set at 2.07m. This height saw Lepiato fail in all three attempts, meaning that he would walk away with the bronze medal.
Praveen and Jonathan both failed the cross the height in the first attempt, but the former managed to go over the bar in the very next attempt, while it took the American his last attempt to advance to the next round. This had now put Praveen in the gold medal spot, after clearing the latest height in less attempts.
The final height of the bar was set at 2.10m, and by this time Praveen had already had a personal best as well as an area record. The Indian was unfortunately not able to clear this height, while Jonathan managed to clear it in the second go. This meant that Poland’s Maciej Lepiato would take the bronze medal, India’s Praveen Kumar would clinch the silver medal and Great Britain’s Jonathan Broom-Edwards would walk away with the gold medal.
Kumar gave India’s medal tally another boost after a few days of stagnancy, and this came around to be the fourth medal for India in high jump, after Nishad Kumar, Mariyappan Thangavelu and Sharad Kumar. Praveen also became the youngest India Paralympian to win a medal, at the age of just 18.
Also read: Tokyo Paralympics 2020: Avani Lekhara rewrites Paralympic record to clinch India’s first gold medal
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Saivee Phatak
(1164 Articles Published)