Ahmedabad: Debutant Tejal Damor and seasoned para paddlers Bhavina Patel and Sonal Patel were among the three bronze medallists for India on the second day of the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya on Tuesday. In all, the Indian contingent won 24 medals — five golds, six silvers and 13 bronzes — on the second day.While Bhavina and Sonal were assured of a bronze medal in the women’s singles by virtue of reaching the semifinal, they lost their respective semifinals 0-3.Sonal lost 7-11, 5-11, 6-11 to Korea’s Jiyu Yoon in a 17-minute clash in women’s singles Class 3, in which players have no trunk control, yet their arms are minimally affected by the impairment.Bhavina lost 7-11, 5-11, 7-11 in a 16-minute clash to multiple Paralympic champion Zhang Bian of China in the women’s singles Classes 4-5. Athletes in the Class 4 category, one in which Bhavina competes, have fair sitting balance and fully functional arms and hands, with their impairment due to a lower spinal cord lesion or cerebral palsy.Meanwhile, reflecting on her bronze medal-winning feat, Bhavina’s husband Nikul Patel told TOI, “Bhavina competed in a higher category than her own and performed exceptionally well. Her disability is more severe, and her wheelchair mobility is also more limited, while her opponent has a much milder disability and has been playing before 2008. The opponent has participated in the Paralympics and has consistently won gold at the Paralympics, World Championships, and Asian events. Even against such a strong player, Bhavina put up a good fight.”In para athletics, Tejal, who hails from Amodara village of Vijaynagar taluka in Sabarkantha district, registered a personal best of 25.23s to bag a bronze medal in women’s T12 200m. The T-12 category is for athletes with visual impairment. She was upstaged by Simran, who clocked 24.80sec for the gold and Iran’s Hajar Safarzadeh, whose timing of 25.02sec helped her win a silver.Speaking after her medal-winning performance, an emotional Tejalben dedicated her achievement to her coach Nitin Choudhary at the Sports Authority of India’s National Centre of Excellence (NCoE) in Gandhinagar.“First of all, I want to thank my coach. There has been tremendous hard work and discipline behind this medal. Even when Sunday was supposed to be a rest day, my coach never allowed our training to suffer. If we had a training session scheduled, he would be there. I want to thank him before anyone else,” Tejal said.“We came here with great expectations, immense hard work and a strong determination to win. My journey has involved a lot of struggles, but I was determined that whatever the difficulties, I had to return with a medal,” she said.
