Twitter Celebrates Bhavina Patel’s Silver Medal In Table Tennis At Tokyo Paralympic Games

Bhavina Patel on Sunday became only the second Indian woman to win a medal at the Paralympics after she signed off with a historic silver following a 0-3 loss to world number one Chinese paddler Ying Zhou in the women’s singles table tennis class 4 final here. The 34-year-old Patel’s impressive run at the Games ended with a fighting 7-11 5-11 6-11 loss to Zhou, a two-time gold medallist, in the women’s singles summit clash which lasted 19 minutes.

With this medal, Indian team opened its account at the Games. She is now only the second women para-athlete to grab a medal after Deepa Malik who won silver at the Women’s Shot Put F53 in Rio 2016. India now have five silver medals at the Paralympic Games.

Soon after she won the medal, many prominent personalities like PM Modi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, ex-cricketer Virender Sehwag among others congratulated Bhavina on Twitter.

Born in 1986, Bhavina Patel got infected by poliomyelitis when she was 12 months old. Coming from a middle-class background, in a family of five, her father could not get her treated when she was young. She moved to Ahmedabad to pursue an ITI computer science course, and there she would take up table tennis as her passion. The rest is history.