Rewind 2024: How record-breaking Paralympic marketing campaign saved India the blushes in Paris

The 12 months 2024 that can be coming to an finish in a matter of per week was packed to the brim with sporting motion. The most important of all of them ¬being the thirty third Summer season Olympics in Paris, with the French capital internet hosting the world’s largest multi-sporting occasion for an unprecedented third time.

The Indian contingent had lofty expectations upon arriving within the ‘Metropolis of Gentle’. It was solely three years in the past, in any case, that the nation had gained seven medals, their largest haul in Olympic historical past. And amongst these seven medals was a historic gold for javelin star Neeraj Chopra, who gained India their first ever Olympic medal in athletics and have become solely the second Indian to win a person Olympic gold medal after legendary shooter Abhinav Bindra.

India’s Olympic marketing campaign in Paris, nonetheless,
didn’t prove fairly as anticipated. The Indian contingent comprising 117 athletes was anticipated to lastly breach the double-digit mark by way of medal depend,
however might solely equal the six medals they’d gained within the 2012 London Olympics.

To make issues much more disappointing, India’s medal haul in London 2012 (2 silver and 4 bronze) was truly higher than that in Paris 2024 (1 silver and 5 bronze) because of an extra silver medal.

Indian Paralympians shine brighter than ever in Paris

The Paris Video games, nonetheless, weren’t an entire disappointment for India regardless of a number of heartbreaks and the failure to achieve the 10-medal mark within the Olympics. The Indians had completed with 19 medals within the Tokyo Paralympic Video games together with 5 gold, and ending twenty fourth on the desk.

Three years later, the Indian para-athletes
would go additional than ever; whereas the nation was but to gather greater than seven medals in a single version of the Olympics, they completed only one wanting 30 within the Paris Paralympics in September, securing a top-20 (18th) end on the medal desk for the primary time ever.

What’s extra, seven of these 29 medals had been gold – two greater than what the Indians had managed in Tokyo.

The Indian contingent had drawn a clean on the opening day of the Paralympic Video games and their account was opened by shooters Avani Lekhara and Mona Agarwal, who had gained gold and bronze respectively within the girls’s 10m air rifle standing SH occasion. By making Paralympic historical past on the very first day of the video games by turning into the primary Indian to win gold in back-to-back editions, Lekhara set the tone for the rest of the occasion.

Manish Narwal would then win the Indian capturing staff’s third medal of the opening day with a silver within the males’s 10m air pistol SH1 class.

Sprinter Preethi Pal would then comply with Lekhara’s footsteps in making historical past in Paris by successful bronze within the girls’s 100m T35 occasion on the opening day, following by a medal of the identical color three days later, however this time in 200 metres.

India win eight medals in a single day

After a promising run by the primary 4 days of the competitors, the Indian para-athletes blazed by Days 5 to 7, successful a complete of 17 medals throughout this era. India gained extra medals in a span of three days than they did between their Paralympic debut in Tel Aviv 1968 and Rio 2016.
That included eight medals on the fifth day alone – greater than twice the 4 medals they’d gained in 1984 and 2016, their highest in a single version earlier than the medal rush in Tokyo.

5 of these eight medals had been gained by shuttlers, together with gold for Nitesh Kumar and silvers for Suhas Yathiraj and Thulasimathi Murugesan. The spotlight of that day, nonetheless, was javelin thrower Sumit Antil not solely successful gold for the second consecutive version, however smashing his personal Paralympic file to bits within the course of.

Day 7 would witness extra historic feats by Indian athletes, with
Harvinder Singh turning into the primary Indian to win archery gold on the Paralympics and Dharambir Nain and Pranav Soorma successful gold and silver respectively on the boys’s membership throw F51 podium, leading to a first-ever one-two podium end for India at any occasion within the Paralympics.

Day 8 witnessed Kapil Parmar win India’s first-ever Paralympic medal in judo with a bronze within the males’s 60kg J1 class. And the icing on the cake for the Indian contingent was Navdeep Singh successful India’s closing medal of the Paris 2024 video games, together with his silver in males’s javelin throw F41 occasion transformed to gold after Iran’s Sadegh Beit Sayah’s disqualification.

With practically 30 medals gained in Paris, the Indian Paralympic contingent will definitely be concentrating on getting near the 50-medal mark within the Los Angeles Video games 4 years from now, which might significantly enhance their hopes of ending among the many high 10 in a worldwide occasion of this scale for the primary time ever.

That actually can be an enormous stride ahead for Indian sports activities, particularly for a rustic that used to battle to win even a single medal – both within the Olympics or within the Paralympics – not too way back.