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HomeOpinionNewsmaker of the WeekOlympics gave India a high, Paralympics has taken it higher. Are administrators...

Olympics gave India a high, Paralympics has taken it higher. Are administrators listening?

Despite the gains made by Indian para-athletes and the media attention, it will risk further consignment as a niche sport, plagued by bureaucracy.

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India’s para-athletes blazed new trails this week at the Tokyo Paralympics, winning 15 medals across an array of competition categories, far surpassing the Tokyo Olympics contingent’s tally of seven. For now, the tally consists of three gold, seven silver and five bronze, but could change by the time the games conclude on Sunday. The total would have been 16, had discus thrower Vinod Kumar not been stripped of his bronze medal in the F52 category on Monday after being declared ‘ineligible’ to compete. As a result, much of the media coverage of India’s Paralympics performance has been divided between the historic podium finishes and the circumstances surrounding Kumar’s disqualification.

When the 2020 Olympics ended, India was on a high, especially after Neeraj Chopra’s gold on the final day. Indians were already looking at the 2024 games, adding medals in their minds. Little did they know, the high would go higher — with the stupendous performance of India’s para-athletes. The ignorant are awake, and with each medal, a mass of supporters are adding themselves to the rally of those following these games. India is talking Paralympics. And that is why India’s performance at 2020 Paralympic is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of The Week.


Avani Lekhara, India’s new shooting star

While some like high-jump silver medalist Mariyappan Thangavelu are repeat successes, 19-year-old rifle shooter Avani Lekhara has been India’s breakout star at the games by some distance.

On Monday, Lekhara became the first Indian woman to win a Paralympic gold. By Friday, she had entered another hallowed category: becoming the only Indian para-athlete to win multiple medals at the same Paralympics. First, the Jaipur shooter scored 249.6 points in the R2 10 metre air rifle standing SH1 event to bag her gold. Then she followed it up with a bronze on Friday in the R8 50 metre Rifle 3 positions SH1 event.

Lekhara is participating in her first ever Paralympics and has etched a legacy that is unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon and will hopefully represent the start of a long-storied career.

The other eleven podium finishers are high jumpers Nishad Kumar, Sharad Kumar and Praveen Kumar; table tennis player Bhavina Patel; javelin throwers Sumit Antil, Devendra Jhajharia and Sundar Singh Gurjar; discus thrower Yogesh Kathuniya; shooter Singhraj Adhana and Manish Narwal; and archer Harvinder Singh.


Also read: Indian federations lack awareness on Paralympics classification of athletes. It shows in Tokyo


Kumar’s disqualification

Now, onto the bronze that wasn’t — the case of the 40-year-old discus thrower from Rohtak, Vinod Kumar, who had a podium finish after his best throw was 19.91 metres, behind Croatia’s Velimir Sandor and Poland’s Piotr Kosewicz. However, his position was declared void when the Paralympics’ competition panel stated it was “unable to allocate” Kumar’s category. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) previously designated him as Classification not Completed (CNC) and now deemed him ineligible to compete in F52 discus throw.

“F52 athletes usually have good shoulder muscles and mildly weak to full elbow and wrist muscles which are required for throwing an implement. Finger flexor and extensor muscles are non-functional making grip of the implement difficult. The non-throwing hand usually requires strapping to the throwing frame,” the IPC website says about para-athletes competing in F52 events.

According to The Week, Kumar became a para-athlete years after recovering from a severe injury to his legs during a training exercise in Leh as part of the Border Security Force. He had been classified as an F52 para-athlete since 2019 and was again re-evaluated and cleared to compete by the IPC on 22 August.

The issue seems to run deeper than just Kumar’s case — on an Indian and an international sporting administrative level, as The Indian Express says, he is only one of 25 Indian para-athletes whose category is “under review” by the IPC.

The Week had quoted Paralympic Committee of India President Deepa Malik who stated that para-athletes’ classification is a regular renewal process, that CNC permits the IPC to continue its classification review even after the event has been completed, and that “CNC is not confirmed participation”. Malik also labelled a possible “misunderstanding” on Kumar’s part, as he was seen celebrating his bronze, seemingly oblivious to what was about to befall him.

Sunil Jain, one of the founder trustees of disability accessibility/advocacy group Astha, criticised Deepa Malik in light of Kumar’s disqualification.

There appears to be a big communication gap between para-athletes and the governing body—the PCI failed to sufficiently inform Kumar about his position — and also shows the need for IPC to rethink its global para-athletes’ classification processes to avoid the ire of upset fans and those unfamiliar with the intricacies.


Also read: 6 medals in 4 Games: How India’s Olympic run has changed wrestling in Haryana


Other conversations

With the spotlight on para-athletes, the role of those running sports administration has come under scanner too — be it lack of funding vis a vis Olympic athletes or non-clarity of rules leading to athletes either struggling to qualify or their medals snatched.

One of the most vocal disability rights Dr Chennapragada, who had flagged the lapses in PCI in a paper in 2019-20, on Wednesday wrote an opinion article for The Bridge on the same issue. “Between the disability rights community in India which takes a human rights perspective on all matters and Paralympians like Deepa Malik who continue to push an ableist agenda, India’s Paralympic movement is a failed state for many reasons.” she said.

Another conversation that surrounded the Paralympics was on ableism and using the right language. Anand Mahindra, who tweeted promising a disability friendly SUV to Lakhera, was seen ‘correcting’ a user on their usage of the term “specially abled”. Later, Mahindra himself was criticised by activists for not following his own advice in tweets as recent as 21 August.

Continuing his congratulatory spree from the Olympics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hailing every medalist at the para games as well. But this time, he hasn’t been tweeting congratulatory images centering on his own face. Instead, he’s posting pictures of himself shaking hands with para-athletes.

 

Despite the gains made by Indian para-athletes and the resulting media attention, the Paralympics will risk further consignment as a niche sport, plagued by technicalities and bureaucracy instead of increasing access to prospective athletes with disabilities.

A Paralympic gold has no less weight than an Olympic one. The Tokyo games have given all the reasons for sports administrators to get up and take notice, for these aren’t merely medals—they are all stories of inspiration. And we saw a living proof of it in Tokyo when a father of a 13-year-old thanked US’ high jumper Sam Grewe for being the inspiration for his son and the family. The teenager suffered from osteosarcoma.

Views are personal.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

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