World Para Athletics Championships: Preeti Pal wins silver TWICE!

India’s Simran (right) with her guide Saifi Umar during the 200m T12 final in New Delhi on Sunday

Devendra Jhajharia's slogan ‘ab ki baar bees par' (this time more than 20) came true on the final day of the World Para Athletics Championships (WPAC) here at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Sunday, but in the most dramatic circumstances that saw the women's 100m T35 final being re-run. "I have never seen this before in my life," said Preeti Pal, who won a silver in both the invalid and the valid race.

India finished the WPAC with 22 medals, including six gold. It was an improvement from the 17 total medals India had won in the last edition in Kobe. But in terms of gold medals, the count stood at identical six. On the gold-medal count, India had finished sixth in Kobe but ended up 10th on the medals tally here.

Besides Preeti's silver medal on the concluding day of the WPAC, India won two more silver - Simran Sharma (women's 200m T12) and Navdeep (men's javelin throw F41). The fourth medal was a bronze, clinched by Sandeep in men's 200m T44 event.

India's Preeti Pal during the 100m T35 final at the World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi on Sunday. PICS/PTI

Before the comedy of errors in Preeti's event, there was an after-race drama in Simran's 200m race, which saw the initial gold medallist from Venezuela Alejandra Lopez getting disqualified for "failure to complying with Rule 7.10 (pushing, pulling, slingshotting, assistance)" as the runners run with a guide. It resulted in Simran's bronze getting upgraded to silver.

The updated result saw Brazil's Clara da Silva winning gold (24.42sec) and China's Shen Yaqin bronze (25.30sec). It was Simran's sixth race of the event. She ran three to win the 100m T12 gold and then three more in the 200m event, where she fell short of defending her title but still made a new Asian record with a timing of 24.46sec.

"It was very difficult to maintain recovery," Simran, who has a visual impairment and runs with her guide Umar Saifi, said after her race. "The competition [for 200m T12] was a little hard, and the body was a little exhausted. I was crying in the cold room in the morning because I couldn't even bend my back." But the drama was reserved for the women's 100m T35 final that had to be re-run because of a start-gun malfunction, which was strangely discovered only after the race had finished.

‘Motivation level was low'

"I felt that I won't be able to finish on the podium now," said Preeti, who finished second both times, winning the silver with her season-best timing of 14.33sec. Gold went to China's Guo Qianqian (14.24sec) and bronze to Iraq's Fatimah Suwaed (14.39sec).

Navdeep

"Now I am relieved, but at that time my motivation level was very low… All the runners were saying, ‘We are very tired.' I said, ‘We are going home. We are not doing it.' " The mix of fear and relief in Preeti's voice was natural, as all her four world-level medals before this had been bronze, coming at the last Paralympics in Paris and the last WPAC in Kobe.

Bronze for Preeti earlier

Preeti had won a bronze earlier in this WPAC in the 200m T35 event. The two medals won each by Simran and Preeti made them the only two Indian athletes to finish on the podium twice in this edition. In the other Indian participation on the last day, Sandeep won a bronze medal in the men's 200m T44 final with a personal-best timing of 23.60sec. Marco Cicchetti of Italy was crowned the champion (23.00sec) and Ukraine's Pavlo Kaplun won silver (23.12sec).

Navdeep finished the 2025 WPAC for India with a silver-medal effort in the men's javelin throw F41 final with his season best of 45.46m, which he registered on his third attempt. Iran's Sadegh Sayah (48.86m) won the gold and the bronze went to China's Sun Pengxiang (43.60m). Brazil topped the medals tally on the gold-medal count with 15 gold, 20 silver and nine bronze. China finished in second place with 13 gold, 22 silver and 17 bronze.

India's final Medal Tally

Gold 6
Silver 9
Bronze 7