The world No.1 Kapil Parmar became the first Indian to win a medal in para-judo at the Paralympic Games on Thursday, September 5. Kapil defeated Elielton Oliveira 10-0 to win a bronze medal in the men's para-judo 60kg category at the Paris Paralympics 2024.
The 24-year-old judoka from Madhya Pradesh's Sehor produced a brilliant ippon, the highest possible score in judo, to dominate his Brazilian opponent in the bronze medal match at Champ-de-Mars Arena.
Parmar earlier defeated Marco Dennis Blanco of Venezuela 10-0 in the quarter-final match but lost 0-10 against Banitaba Khorram Abadi of Iran in the semi-final.
The Indian judoka, who won the silver medal at the 2022 Asian Games in the same category, had earlier beaten Venezuela's Marco Dennis Blanco 10-0 in the quarterfinal.
Parmar's bronze took India's medal tally at the 17th edition of the Paralympic Games to a record-extending 25. India is expected to add more medals to its tally with three more events lined up later on Thursday. India also matched its best-ever performance of five golds at the 2022 Tokyo Para Games yesterday and is currently placed 13th in the medal table.
In another medal event on Thursday, Indian archers Harvinder Singh and Pooja Jatyan missed out on a bronze medal in the mixed team recurve open at Paris Paralympics 2024 on Thursday, September 5. The Indian duo suffered a 4-5 defeat against Slovenia's Dejan Fabcic and Ziva Lavrinc to miss out on India's only fourth medal in archery in Paralympics history.
After winning the first set easily, Pooja and Harvinder struggled for consistency with just three 10s in their next nine attempts. Pooja registered a 5 in the final set as the Slovenian pair made a strong comeback to take the game to the shootoff. Harvinder registered 8 and Pooja hit 9 in shootoff while Fabcic and Lavrinc scored 18 to take the bronze.
