India's lone swimmer at the London 2012 Paralympics, Sharath Gayakwad, failed to make the final of the 100m butterfly event by 0.58 seconds
Gayakwad finished 9th overall with a time of 1:07.12. In the first heat, the 21-year-old from Bangalore had finished fourth.
Spain’s Jaime Bailon (1:06.54) was the last qualifier. Gayakwad’s journey at the Games is not over just yet. He is set to participate in three more events.
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Indian paralympic swimmer Sharath Gayakwad
He will compete in the 100m butterfly event on September 1, the 50m freestyle swimming on Sept 3 and the 200m individual medley on Sept 6.
India has 10 athletes at the Paralympics in London. Farman Basha (48kg) was scheduled to compete in powerlifting late last night, while Naresh Sharma will participate in the 10m air rifle standing today.
Jaideep Jaideep (discus throw), Rajindersingh Rahelu (powerlifting), Narender Ranbir (javelin throw), Jagseer Singh (long Jump), Girisha Nagarajegowda (high jump), Sachin Chaudhary (powerlifting) and Amit Kumar (discus throw) complete the Indian contingent.u00a0
China win Games’ first gold
World records tumbled yesterday, as the first day of competition at the London Paralympics got under way and China won the Games’ first gold medal.
At the Velodrome, seven-time Paralympic champion British cyclist Sarah Storey, who was born without a functioning left hand, clocked a new world best
3min 32.170sec in the women's C5 3km individual pursuit.
Meanwhile, two other world records were set in qualifying for the women’s C1-2-3 3km individual pursuit: Zeng Sini, a C2 rider from China, broke the world best to book a place in the gold medal race against Australia’s Simone Kennedy.
In the women’s R2 10m air rifle at the Royal Artillery Barracks, which saw China’s Zhang Cuiping win the Games’ first gold, scoring 104.9 for an overall score of 500.9.
London 2012 Paralympics in numbers...
A record 2.5 MILLION tickets have been put on sale, with organisers expecting the first-ever Paralympic sell-out.
4,200 athletes are vying in 503 medal events, up from 3,951 competitors in Beijing in 2008.
There are 20 Paralympic sports in 2012, including athletics, swimming, cycling, wheelchair rugby, and goalball, in which visually-impaired athletes play with a ball embedded with a bell.
15 men’s 100m finals will be contested under the complex Paralympic classification system, which tries to ensure fair competition by pitting athletes of similar levels of impairment against each other.
166 countries are expected to send athletes to the Games. Some 16 nations will be making their Paralympic debut, including North Korea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There are 15 competition
venues, including the Olympic Stadium, velodrome, aquatics centre and Eton Manor, a permanent new complex of nine wheelchair tennis courts inside the Olympic Park.
1,250 anti-doping samples will be taken during the Paralympics, an increase of 25 percent since Beijing.
A workshop with 15,000 spare parts will be on standby to repair athletes’ wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and orthoses — devices which support the limbs.
580 torchbearers carried the Paralympic flame in a 24-hour relay from Stoke Mandeville — the birthplace of the Paralympic movement, in southern England — to London’s Olympic Stadium on August 29.
780 hours of live coverage
will be streamed on the International Paralympic Committee’s website, with commentary in English and Spanish. u00a0
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