Para badminton
player Krishna Nagar won a gold medal at the ongoing Tokyo Paralympics in
the men’s singles SH6 class event on Sunday. The win brought India its fifth gold, taking the country’s total medal tally to an unprecedented 19.

Second-seed
Nagar defeated Hong Kong’s Chu Man Kai 21-17, 16-21, 21-17 in the final that lasted 43 minutes.

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He beat
Malaysia’s Taresoh Didin 22-20, 21-10 in his opening match and defeated Brazil’s
Vitor Goncalves Tavares 21-17, 21-14 to top Group B in the SH6 category. He
then outclassed Great Britain’s Krysten Coombs 21-10, 21-11 in the semifinals
to book his place in the gold medal match.

Who is Krishna
Nagar?

Krishna
Nagar is an Indian para badminton player from Rajasthan. World number two in
the SH6 class, Krishna has a short-stature impairment. He has won bronze medal
in the singles event and a silver alongside compatriot Raja Magotra in the
doubles at the 2019 World Championships.

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The 22-year-old
has also won a bronze medal at the 2018 Asian Para Games in Indonesia,
defeating Didin in straight games to finish third.

He is
currently coached by Gaurav Khanna, the head national coach of the para
badminton team from Lucknow who was awarded the Dronacharya Award in 2020. He
is also the coach of a number of other para shuttlers in the Indian contingent at
Tokyo.

Among the
other shuttlers he is currently the coach of are India’s first-ever Paralympic gold
medallist Pramod Bhagat, bronze medallist Manoj Sarkar, Palak Kohli, Parul
Parmar and others.

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Born in Jaipur, Nagar took up badminton in 2014 and began playing the sport seriously three years later. He was encouraged to take up the sport by his cousin. 

“There were so many sports I couldn’t do (at school) but I realised I could run fast so I would practise sprints all the time. Then I found badminton. I can jump really high and I run fast. It allows me to test my abilities to the fullest,” he was quoted as saying on the official Paralympics website.