Mariyappan Thangavelu bags first gold in eight years

KOBE: Tokyo Paralympics silver winner Mariyappan also grabbed a gold in T63 high jump with a championship record of 1.88m. This was his first gold in a major event in eight years.

The 28-year-old Mariyappan won gold in T42 high jump in the 2016 Rio Paralympics and a silver in the Tokyo edition in 2021 in T63. He also won a silver in the T63 class in the Hangzhou Para Asian Games last yearThe T63 classification is for athletes with single through knee or above knee limb deficiency competing with a prosthesis.

The T63 classification is for athletes with single through knee or above knee limb deficiency competing with a prosthesis.

Americans Ezra Frech and Sam Grewe won silver and bronze with jumps of 1.85m and 1.82m respectively.

Hailing from Salem district in Tamil Nadu, Mariyappan was raised by his daily wage labourer mother who also sells vegetables after his father abandoned the family.

At the age of five, Mariyappan suffered permanent disability in his right leg when he was run over by a drunk bus driver while walking to school. Before taking up sport, he would do the job of newspaper hawker and work at construction sites to help his mother run the family.