Preethi Pal was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a kid… Just imagine the journey from there to the finishing lines of the women’s 200m T35 race at the Paris 2024 Paralympics Games.
A couple of days ago, she won a bronze in the women’s 100m T35 race (14.21 seconds). And now she has backed it with yet another bronze in the 200m race (30.01 seconds).
In both races, she delivered her personal best and isn’t that what the Paralympics and life is all about?
Until a week ago, no Indian had ever won a medal in a para-athletics events and now suddenly we have not one but two, both thanks to and owned by this 23-year-old from Meerut.
She had missed medal opportunities twice at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games but made a strong comeback this year when she won a bronze at the World Para Athletics Championships at Kobe, Japan in May. Earlier in the year she had won two gold medals in the Indian Open Para Athletics Championships in Bangalore.
She has come to the party big time in Paris and takes India’s medal tally to six, thus equalising the total medal haul of the Indian Olympic contingent, within just the first four days of the Paralympics.