Paris: India bagged another medal in the para-athletics competition at the Paralympic Games as Simran Sharma won a historic bronze medal with a personal best time of 24.75 seconds in the Women’s 200m T12 category at the Stade de France Stadium here on Saturday.
The 24-year-old Simran got off to a slow start in the Women’s 200m T12 final but made up for it with a strong finish as she finished third. This is India’s first-ever medal in the Women’s 200m T12 category. Simran bagged the first medal for India on the penultimate day of competitions in the Paralympic Games with a superb run that bagged her first medal in the Paralympic Games.
The visually impaired Simran and her guide Abhay Singh won India’s 28th medal in the Paris Paralympic Games and the 16th medal in para-athletics. Simran had finished fourth in the Women’s 100m T12 category, narrowly missing the bronze medal. Cuba’s Omara Durand Elias completed a grand sprint double by adding the Women’s 200m T12 gold to the one she had bagged in the 100m T12 race a few days back.
She won the gold medal with a season’s best timing of 23.62. This is the third gold in Paris for Omara Durand Elias as she has also won the Women’s 400m T12 category. Venezuala’s Alejandra Paola Perez Lopez won the silver medal in the Women’s 200m T12 category with a personal best timing of 24.19 seconds. The 24-year-old Simran is a second-time Paralympian and a gold medallist in the World Para-athletics Championship in Kobe, Japan, earlier this year. The sprinter from New Delhi had finished 11th in the Women’s 100m T13 category in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. Simran was born prematurely and spent the next 10 weeks in an incubator where it was discovered that she is visually impaired.
Coached by her husband Gajendra Singh, who works for the Army Service Corps, she trains at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi. She has come a long way from being mocked for her visual impairment to winning gold in the recent World Para Athletics Championships in Kobe and now in the Paralympics final. She finished 11th in 100m – T13 at the Tokyo Para Games in 2021 with a timing of 12.69.
Simran’s hard work and resilience helped her overcome physical and socio-economic challenges as she clinched the T12 200m gold in style at the World Championships in Japan in June. Since 2022, Simran has won the National Championship and the Indian Open in the 100m and 200m. She also won two silver medals in the Asian Para Games in Hangzhou last year.
IANS
