World Para Athletics: Gold for Simran; India finish fifth

Kobe (Japan): Simran Sharma won the women's 200m T12 event with a personal best time of 24.95 seconds to fetch the sixth gold medal for India on the final day of the World Para Athletics Championships here on Saturday.

Simran shaved off around one-fifth of a second from her earlier personal best of 25.16 seconds to win the gold.

Darlenys De La Severino (25.08) of Dominica and Lorraine Gomes De Aguiar (25.40) won the silver and bronze respectively.

The T12 category is meant for athletes who have vision impairment.

Preethi Pal won her second medal of the championship with a bronze in the women's 100 meters T35 category. Preethi had earlier won bronze in 200 meters in the same category.

India's Navdeep won a bronze medal with a season-best performance of 42.82 meters in the men's javelin throw F41 category.

India ended fifth  with 17 medals (6 gold, 5 silver, 6 bronze). This is India's best-ever performance, having surpassed the earlier record of 10 medals (3 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze) from the 2023 edition in Paris. 

Earlier, India were awarded the silver and bronze in men's javelin throw F46 event after winning protest against second-place finisher Dinesh Priyantha Herath of Sri Lanka.

Rinku Hooda and Ajeet Singh on Friday finished third and fourth respectively in the men's F46 javelin throw final but the result was put on hold after India lodged a protest that Herath was ineligible to compete in the category.

In para sports, athletes are classified into groups with similar levels of physical ability to allow fair competition.

The F46 classification is for athletes with arm deficiency, impaired muscle power or impaired passive range of movement in arms, with athletes competing in a standing position.

"He (Herath) was not classified properly and did not belong to F 46 category," said an official from Paralympic Committee of India.

India got a favourable decision and Herath was disqualified. Rinku, who originally finished third with an effort of 62.77m, was upgraded to second while Ajeet (62.11m) was handed a bronze.

"We won the protest against the Sri Lankan, who had also won gold at the Tokyo Paralympics, that he should not have been eligible to compete, head coach Satyanarayan told PTI.

"Now, Rinku is the silver winner from original third and Ajeet was upgraded from fourth place to bronze."