Mumbai: There’s been something about Indian para athletes and double podium finishes at the Commonwealth Games (CWG).
Sharmila Dhankar and Shilpa Shyla began the trend by capturing gold and bronze, respectively, in the women’s shot put F57 category. Then, Dilip Gavit and Mohammed Basil produced a memorable 1-2 finish in the men’s 100m T47 event.
Soman Rana and Shubham Juyal added to it on the final day of para athletics on Saturday, winning gold and silver in the men’s shot put F57 category.
It capped off a fine campaign in Glasgow for India’s para athletes, and the para contingent as a whole. It added seven medals to the overall tally, the best ever performance by an Indian para contingent at the CWG. Apart from one bronze from para powerlifting, six of those came from athletics, including three gold. Each of those had another Indian on the podium.
On Friday evening, it was Rana and Juyal with the double act. In the 10-man shot put final that had them head and shoulders above the rest (after Rana’s PB of 15.17m and Juyal’s 14.86m, the next best was Cameron’s Cedric Azamdzi with 12.70m), the Indian duo living up to their billing.
Rana took gold with an effort of 13.40m off his second attempt, while Juyal was next best at 13.28m from his final attempt. Azamdzi took bronze with 12.57m.
The triumph adds another chapter to the remarkable journey of 43-year-old Armyman Rana. His father a farmer and mother a housewife, Rana joined the Gorkha Rifles as a sepoy in 2001, and was part of his unit’s boxing team.
Five years later, while serving in the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir, he was badly injured in a mine blast, which resulted in an amputation below the knee. Transferred to the Army’s Artificial Limb Centre in Pune, Rana never gave up on his sporting ambitions. He took up para athletics and joined the Army Paralympic Node in 2017.
He won gold at the Indian Open Para Athletics in 2023, and silver at the Asian Para Games held in Hangzhou. The Paralympics have been more testing – he came fourth in Tokyo in 2021 and 5th in Paris in 2024 – but this CWG gold adds a missing medal from his cabinet.
Juyal, the 30-year-old from Roorkee, too trains at Pune’s Army Paralympic Node. His father retiring as a Naib Subedar, the son too cleared the written exam for the Army Cadet College entry scheme in 2022. A serious motorcycle accident while heading for his SSB interview, however, turned his life.
Going through rehab in Pune, Juyal was given the option to pursue either a vocational diploma course or para sports. He picked the latter, and hasn’t looked back since.
After winning gold at the Indian Open Para Athletics Grand Prix earlier this year, this is his first major international medal.
