CHENNAI: Nitesh Kumar used to play football and basketball before he lost his left leg in a mishap in 2009. The unfortunate train accident failed to break him as his father Vijender Singh, a junior commissioned officer with the Indian Navy and amputee soldiers of the Kargil War, did their best to keep Nitesh motivated.
Always good at academics, Nitesh pursued electrical engineering at IIT Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. It was during his first semester in Mandi, he watched fellow students battling it out on the badminton court on the campus. "Fellow students asked him to join seeing his enthusiasm and soon he started defeating them despite him being on a prosthetic leg," father Vijender told this daily from Charkhi Dadri in Haryana.
Nitesh went on to win medals at the Para Asian Games in 2018 and 2023 but missed out on a chance to represent the country in the Tokyo Paralympics. He made up for the lost time when he clinched his first gold in the SL3 category at the ongoing 2024 Paris Paralympics on Monday.
But it was not easy for Nitesh to pursue engineering and badminton simultaneously especially when he started competing in international events. "On weekdays he used to attend classes and then board a bus on Friday evening from Mandi to Karnal, Haryana. After a 12-hour overnight journey, he used to have three sessions at the Karan Stadium on Saturdays and Sundays before boarding a bus for Mandi again on Sunday evening.
He even took a one-year break from studies to compete at the 2018 Para Asian Games where he won men's doubles bronze," added the father.
Nitesh was up against Great Britain's Daniel Bethell in the final. Bethell, the Tokyo Games silver medallist, had emerged victorious in all the previous nine meetings. The 29-year-old from Haryana, however, came up with his greatest win on the grandest stage as he beat his opponent 21-14, 18-21, 23-21 to help India retain the SL3 gold, which Pramod Bhagat had won in Tokyo.
"I have lost such situations against him and I didn't want to make the same mistakes. I had lost my calm in the past so I told myself that I should keep fighting for each point. At 19-20 in the decider also I told myself to stick in there and make him earn the point," Nitesh said after the match.
Silver lining
Meanwhile, discus thrower Yogesh Kathuniya won his second consecutive Paralympic silver medal in the F56 category after a season's best effort of 42.22m on Monday. The F-56 classification covers limb deficiency, leg length difference, impaired muscle power and impaired range of movement.
Besides him, para-shuttlers Thulasimathi Murugesan (SU5) and Suhas Yathiraj (SL4), who had won a silver in the Tokyo Games as well, too finished second in their respective events. Another para-shuttler Manisha Ramadass (SU5), who was beaten by Thulasimathi in the semifinal, won the bronze medal play-off. Both women shuttlers hail from Tamil Nadu.
In the women's singles SU5 category, 22-year-old Thulasimathi, born with a congenital deformity in her left hand, lost 17-21, 10-21 to China's defending champion Yang Qiuxia. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Manisha, who was born with Erb's Palsy affecting her right arm, secured the bronze by defeating Denmark's Cathrine Rosengren 21-12, 21-8.