Harvinder Singh created history by winning the first-ever gold medal in archery in Para Olympics.
Tokyo Games bronze medallist Harvinder Singh secured back-to-back wins to reach recurve open category archery finals in his bid for a successive Paralympics medal in the competition on Wednesday.
He defeated Poland’s Lukasz Ciszek 6-0 (28-24, 28-27, 29-25) in the men’s individual recurve open final.
His sensational performance throughout the event had him secure a 6-0 lead against Poland’s Ciszek.
In the semis, Harvinder won 6-4 against Iranian Mohammad Reza Arab to reach the finals.
Harvinder is the first-ever Indian Paralympic medallist in archery who knocked out Tseng Lung-Hui of Chinese Taipei 7-3 before overcoming an opening set loss to win against Setiawan Setiawan of Indonesia 6-2 in the last-16 round.
In recurve open class, archers shoot from a standing position at 70m at a 122cm target made up of 10 concentric circles, scoring from 10 points down to 1 point from the centre outwards.
Hailing from a family of farmers from Ajit Nagar in Haryana, Harvinder faced significant adversity early in life.
When he was just one and a half years old, he contracted dengue and received injections for treatment. Unfortunately, the side effects of these injections resulted in a loss of function in his legs.
Despite this early challenge, he found a passion for archery after getting inspiration from the 2012 London Paralympics.
He made his debut at the 2017 Para Archery World Championship, finishing seventh.
A gold medal at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Para Games followed, and during the COVID-19 lockdown, his father turned their farm into an archery range to support his training.
Harvinder made history by winning India’s first-ever archery medal -- a bronze -- at the Tokyo Paralympics three years ago.
Alongside his sporting success, he is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in economics.
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