Sunday, September 11, 2016

The 11 GoSports Foundation athletes who are competing at the Paralympic Games

SEPTEMBER 11, 2016 | EDIT

Sep 10 at 6:36 PM

Paralympics Edition

The dust has barely settled on India’s achievements at the Rio Olympics in August. However, our participation in Rio is far from over, as the focus has now shifted towards the Paralympic Games. India have a lot to look forward to, having sent our largest ever contingent of 19 athletes across various disciplines such as athletics, powerlifting, archery and swimming. The GoSports Foundation is proud to be supporting 11 out of these 19 achievers! Our Executive Director, Deepthi Bopaiah, is in Rio to support and encourage the athletes as they look to return with record performances from the Paralympics. You can catch all her updates from Rio here!

The 11 GoSports Foundation athletes who are competing at the Paralympic Games

MEDAL UPDATE!

The Games have indeed begun, and how!! On day 2 of the Games, our para high jump stars thrilled the nation, as 21 year old Mariyappan Thangavelu cleared 1.89m to clinch top honours in the Men’s T-42 High Jump Final in the early hours of September 10th back home, closely followed by his compatriot and GoSports athlete Varun Singh Bhati, who jumped 1.86m on his third attempt to take the bronze medal. The two athletes train under coach Sathyanarayana in Bangalore, along with fellow Paralympian Sharad Kumar, who placed 6th at the event.Here is a video, courtesy the IPC Feed, of the Indian national anthem being played, as our athletes calmly stand on top of the world!

Mariyappan Thangavelu and Varun Singh Bhati with the tricolour draped around them,
and with their medals on the podium with silver medallist Sam Grewe of USA

RECAP SO FAR
Earlier, on September 7, after an extravagant opening ceremony marking the beginning of the Paralympics, India kicked off their campaign with Farman Basha narrowly missing out on a medal by finishing 4th in Powerlifting, thus bettering his 5th place finish from London 2012. Amit Saroha finished 7th in Discus Throw, and is nicely warmed up for his main event, the club throw, lined up for September 16.

Also seen in action yesterday were javelin thrower Sandeep, who also finished fourth in the F-42-43-44 event, missing out on the bronze medal by just 0.69m, inspite of having thrown his personal best! GoSports athlete Narender Ranbir also threw his personal best distance of 53.79, to finish 6th in the event. Swimmer Suyash Jadhav was also seen in action in the 50m freestyle event S7, and shaved more than a second off his personal best time. He finished 9th overall in the heats, and missed out on the finals by 1 place. He can be seen in action again on September 12, in his main event – the 50m Butterfly S7.

The Indian Contingent prior to the Paralympic Games opening ceremony

JEET KA HALLA!
Our Principal Partners to the Para Champions Programme, IndusInd Bank, have created a beautiful video and anthem to celebrate the achievements and stories of our para athletes.

Do click on the image below to take a look at the video, and share it in order to spread awareness of the Paralympic movement in India!

From L – R (standing): GoSports Para Champions Swapnil Patil, Ramkaran Singh, Niranjan Mukundan, and Rajinder Singh Rahelu (Centre) are featured in the anthem titled “Jeet Ka Halla”

The action continues until September 18 and you can catch it all live here! We are also very happy to inform everyone that highlights of the Paralympics will be shown on Sony Six and Sony ESPN morning and evening until the conclusion of the Games.

Here is the schedule of the Indian contingent over the next seven days. Please do follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the action. Our Executive Director Deepthi Bopaiah will also be sharing video blogs, images, and impressions from ground zero, and can be followed on Twitter and Facebook as well.

We encourage everyone to join the Indian Paralympic movement and thank you for your support!