Rewind 2024: How record-breaking Paralympic campaign saved India the blushes in Paris

The year 2024 that will be coming to an end in a matter of a week was packed to the brim with sporting action. The biggest of them all ¬being the 33rd Summer Olympics in Paris, with the French capital hosting the world’s largest multi-sporting event for an unprecedented third time.

The Indian contingent had lofty expectations upon arriving in the ‘City of Light’. It was only three years ago, after all, that the country had won seven medals, their biggest haul in Olympic history. And among those seven medals was a historic gold for javelin star Neeraj Chopra, who won India their first ever Olympic medal in athletics and became only the second Indian to win an individual Olympic gold medal after legendary shooter Abhinav Bindra.

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India’s Olympic campaign in Paris, however, did not turn out quite as expected. The Indian contingent comprising 117 athletes was expected to finally breach the double-digit mark in terms of medal count, but could only equal the six medals they had won in the 2012 London Olympics.

To make matters even more disappointing, India’s medal haul in London 2012 (2 silver and 4 bronze) was actually better than that in Paris 2024 (1 silver and 5 bronze) due to an additional silver medal.

Indian Paralympians shine brighter than ever in Paris

The Paris Games, however, weren’t a complete disappointment for India despite multiple heartbreaks and the failure to reach the 10-medal mark in the Olympics. The Indians had finished with 19 medals in the Tokyo Paralympic Games including five gold, and finishing 24th on the table.

Three years later, the Indian para-athletes would go further than ever; while the country was yet to collect more than seven medals in a single edition of the Olympics, they finished just one short of 30 in the Paris Paralympics in September, securing a top-20 (18th) finish on the medal table for the first time ever.

What’s more, seven of those 29 medals were gold – two more than what the Indians had managed in Tokyo.

The Indian contingent had drawn a blank on the opening day of the Paralympic Games and their account was opened by shooters Avani Lekhara and Mona Agarwal, who had won gold and bronze respectively in the women’s 10m air rifle standing SH event. By making Paralympic history on the very first day of the games by becoming the first Indian to win gold in back-to-back editions, Lekhara set the tone for the remainder of the event.

Manish Narwal would then win the Indian shooting team’s third medal of the opening day with a silver in the men’s 10m air pistol SH1 category.

Sprinter Preethi Pal would then follow Lekhara’s footsteps in making history in Paris by winning bronze in the women’s 100m T35 event on the opening day, following by a medal of the same colour three days later, but this time in 200 metres.

India win eight medals in a single day

After a promising run through the first four days of the competition, the Indian para-athletes blazed through Days 5 to 7, winning a total of 17 medals during this period. India won more medals in a span of three days than they did between their Paralympic debut in Tel Aviv 1968 and Rio 2016. That included eight medals on the fifth day alone – more than twice the four medals they had won in 1984 and 2016, their highest in a single edition before the medal rush in Tokyo.

Five of those eight medals were won by shuttlers, including gold for Nitesh Kumar and silvers for Suhas Yathiraj and Thulasimathi Murugesan. The highlight of that day, however, was javelin thrower Sumit Antil not only winning gold for the second consecutive edition, but smashing his own Paralympic record to bits in the process.

Sumit Antil was among the gold medallists as India won a record29 medals at Paris Paralympics 2024. Reuters

Day 7 would witness more historic feats by Indian athletes, with Harvinder Singh becoming the first Indian to win archery gold at the Paralympics and Dharambir Nain and Pranav Soorma winning gold and silver respectively on the men’s club throw F51 podium, resulting in a first-ever one-two podium finish for India at any event in the Paralympics.

Day 8 witnessed Kapil Parmar win India’s first-ever Paralympic medal in judo with a bronze in the men’s 60kg J1 category. And the icing on the cake for the Indian contingent was Navdeep Singh winning India’s final medal of the Paris 2024 games, with his silver in men’s javelin throw F41 event converted to gold after Iran’s Sadegh Beit Sayah’s disqualification.

With nearly 30 medals won in Paris, the Indian Paralympic contingent will certainly be targeting getting close to the 50-medal mark in the Los Angeles Games four years from now, which would greatly boost their hopes of finishing among the top 10 in a global event of this scale for the first time ever.

That certainly would be a giant stride forward for Indian sports, especially for a country that used to struggle to win even a single medal – either in the Olympics or in the Paralympics – not too long ago.