It was a dream come true moment for India’s para badminton star Manasi Joshi when she clinched her first World Championships crown, overcoming experienced compatriot Parul Parmer in the womens singles SL3 final here on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having faced three-time world champion Parmer several times this year and always finishing on the losing side, Joshi wasn’t the favourite going into the final. However, she beat the odds by keeping her calm and by unleasing some sharp strokes to defeat Parmer 21-12, 21-7 for the first time in her fledgling career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joshi, who lost her left leg in an accident in 2011, made a slow start and was even 2-7 down in the opening game, but raced ahead owing to better fitness. In the second game, she was ahead from the start and went on to pick up 9 consecutive points enroute the gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An elated Joshi later admitted that her strenuous training at the Pullela Gopichand Academy recently did wonders to her campaign.
\n“I have trained extremely hard\u2026training three sessions a day. The focus was on my fitness, so I also lost some weight and gained more muscle. I spent more time in the gym, working six sessions a week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I also put a lot of effort to improve my strokes and played practice matches everyday at the Academy. I believe the improvements are already showing,” the 30-year-old told the Paralympic Committee of India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joshi added that she now has a new walking prosthesis socket. “The old one which I was using for the last five years was making me slow during workouts.” Joshi, who had looked up to German tennis legend Steffi Graf growing up, now wants to “play more singles matches at other events, including the Asian Championships”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With 14 events included at the Paralympics, the women’s singles SL3 category is not part of the Tokyo 2020 Games. She is keeping her fingers crossed though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Parul was leading the show for many years. No doubt she plays with a lot of zeal, determination and willpower, but she is 46 years old and that makes a difference when you are up against a younger player. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I am sure she will make a comeback. Having said that, Manasi has improved over the years. And she is much more mature as a player now. I am very happy for her. She produced a splendid performance,” Khanna told PCI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides Joshi, Pramod Bhagat and Manoj Sarkar were the other gold medallists on Saturday as they came from a game down to defeat compatriots Nitesh Kumar and Tarun Dhillon 14-21, 21-15, 21-16 in the men’s doubles SL3-4 category final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a dream come true moment for India’s para badminton star Manasi Joshi when she clinched her first World Championships crown, overcoming experienced compatriot Parul Parmer in the womens singles SL3 final here on Saturday. Having faced three-time world champion Parmer several times this year and always finishing on the losing side, Joshi wasn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69022,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69020\/revisions\/69022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}