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Golden girl Avani holds on to her Paralympics crown
The 22-year-old won the women’s 10m air rifle standing SH1 event at the shooting ranges of Chateauroux
Three years ago, at the Tokyo Paralympics, golden girl Avani Lekhara went where no Indian woman had ever gone before. At the Paris Paralympics on Friday, Avani raised the bar higher by going where no Indian athlete had ever gone before by winning back-to-back Paralympics gold medals.
The 22-year-old won the women’s 10m air rifle standing SH1 event at the shooting ranges of Chateauroux and Mona Agarwal clinched bronze in the same event to become a first-time medallist for a rare double Indian podium finish.
Hours later, men’s 10m air rifle shooter Manish Narwal grabbed a silver, and 300km away in Paris, Preethi Pal’s bronze in the women’s 100m T35 gave the country its first in a track event as India’s para-athletes made a start that is brighter than even the most optimistic pre-Games expectations.
Avani perhaps best signifies India’s growth in the Paralympics over the years. In 2021, the teen from Jaipur, confined to the wheelchair after a road accident in 2012, burst on to the scene with her golden debut in Tokyo. In Paris, she ensured the glitter on her shooting would shine just as bright.
After finishing second in the qualification round, she was comfortably placed in the medal bracket in the 24-shot final, but was in for the fight for gold with Korea’s Lee Yunri. The silver was in grasp but not the gold, until the Korean shot a barely believable 6.8 off her final shot to fumble under pressure. Avani kept her composure to shoot 10.5 and sign off with a new Paralympic record score of 249.7. The Indian beamed after her final shot, lighting up the room as much with her smile as she had with her shooting.
“It was a nerve-wracking experience for me. Being a defending champion, it brings a lot of nerves,” Avani said from Chateauroux after her win. “To win two gold medals, it feels nice.”
This would feel sweeter given the health obstacles Avani had to overcome in getting there. In March, Avani underwent surgery to remove gallbladder stones, a procedure that kept her away from training for nearly two months. With the Paralympics in sight and gold to defend, it made her anxious.
“It was really challenging, because I wasn’t training for that period. And then I had to train a lot to get the strength back in my core muscles,” she said.
Avani pocketed two medals in Tokyo — also bronze in women’s 50m rifle 3 positions SH1 — and has two more events to go in Chateauroux. Speaking hours after her wearing the gold on the podium, Avani said she had already moved on while looking ahead to her next event. Yet there was something she wanted to look back at from the Paralympics of 2021, and which she repeated in the Paralympics of 2024.
“That (2021 gold) medal broke barriers for other women in our country. They could see that women can also win gold in India,” Avani said. “I was happy to be the first one to achieve that.”
Mona was also happy with her first Paralympic medal. Struck by polio nine months after birth that affected both her lower limbs, the Sikar-born 37-year-old now has a bronze (with a score of 228.7) against her name merely two-and-a-half years after she picked up shooting. There were apprehensions by her own family members about the sporting route she took — she dabbled in other sports before shooting — and staying away from her kids was the toughest thing for her to do in her Paralympic medal pursuit.
“My entire family is proud of me now. My kids have been asking me why I haven’t been coming home, and every evening I cry while speaking to them,” Mona said. “To become a medallist in my first Paralympics, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
Later, Tokyo Games champion Narwal backed up his gold from three years ago with a silver medal in the men’s 10m air pistol SH1 with a score of 234.9 to finish behind Korean Jo Jeongdu (237.4) and make it three medals for India on Friday from the shooting ranges of Chateauroux.
Up north in Paris, sprinter Preethi delivered India’s first Paralympic medal on track by clinching bronze in the women’s T35 100m with a timing of 14.21 seconds. All of India’s previous athletics medals at the Paralympics had come in field events.
The Uttar Pradesh woman was born with physical challenges as her lower body was plastered six days after birth. She wore calipers for eight years from the age of five.
