Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
Paralympics that made its way into becoming a global competitive sporting event first took place in the 1960 Rome tournament. It has its genesis when as means of rehabilitation for those who suffered injuries in the World War II, a German doctor who escaped Nazi persecution by name Ludwig Guttmann decided to alleviate their plight. What commenced as a means of rehabilitation later turned into a recreational form of sports for the handicapped people and subsequently it earned its merit as a competitive sporting event.
India’s medal tally in the Paralympics event began only in 1972 when a 1965 Indo-Pak war veteran, Murlikant Petkar won the gold in the men’s 50 metre freestyle swimming event. Over the decades India has succeeded in securing an even share of gold, silver and bronze medals (a tally of four each) since India tasted their first success in these four-yearly events. The noteworthy mention for Indian Paralympics teams is individual performances. Unlike in the Olympics where Indian efforts rode heavily on their hockey teams to win medals, it was individual athletes that bagged medals for India in this event.
Glad tidings poured in recently when the Indian Table Tennis women’s player Bhavinaben Patel clinched the silver medal in her debut appearance at the Paralympics games Tokyo. Bhavina happens to be the first woman player to win a medal in Table Tennis. Having begun on a positive note her performance makes her only the second Indian woman athlete to win a medal in the Paralympics event after Deepa Malik won the silver in the short put category at the 2016 Rio event.
One might observe that though our tally at Paralympics is somewhat healthier compared to the Olympics, it was only after the media boom that caused a host of private television channels besides Web news portals that covered sporting events globally, did the Indian sports lovers gain awareness about the feats of our handicapped athletes. The event is, however, yet to gain the same amount of patronage as the mainstream event just like in the case of our women’s cricket team performing at the World Cup.
As the Paralympics and other sporting events like European Soccer Club keep gaining popularity with the Indian masses, it’s likely that India is able to throw up a bigger repository of persons with sporting skills for participation in competitive tournaments. Though the Paralympics events have their origins rooted in rehabilitation of injured war veterans, over the decades they have managed to capture the imaginations of both mainstream sporting enthusiasts and professionals.
It may be recalled that Neeraj Chopra winning a gold medal in the Javelin throw event at the Tokyo Olympics fetched our Indian contingent a much deserved accolade. Interestingly, in the previous Paralympics at 2016 in Rio, it was Devendra Jhajharia who won a gold medal in the Javelin throw event. It can be only hoped that our Paralympics heroes winning mostly in the individual medals category will serve to inspire our regular Olympics performers to pick a leaf from their books.
