Catherine Debrunner becomes first player to win three gold in New Delhi World Para Athletics C'ships

New Delhi, Oct 1 (PTI) Swiss wheelchair athlete Catherine Debrunner became the first player to win three gold medals in this edition of the World Para Athletics Championships with her 1500m T54 title on the fifth day of competitions here on Wednesday.

She clocked a championships record time of 3 minutes 16.81 seconds to win the 1500m T54 gold after earlier claiming the women's 5000m T54 and 800m T53 crowns.

Defending champion Zhou Zhaoqian of China was relegated to second place for the second time after the 800m.

The Chinese will be hoping to turn the tables on Debrunner in the 100m and 400m sprints over the next few days. But Debrunner has the experience of winning four gold medals in the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games and will want to go one better here.

There was no Indian medal on Wednesday but the hosts remained at the fourth spot with 4 gold, 4 silver and 1 bronze.

Brazil continued to be at the top with 8 gold, 15 silver and 7 bronze, followed by China (7-9-5) and Poland (6-1-5) at the end of the fifth day of competitions.

There was intense drama in the men’s shot put F36 contest with Vladimir Sviridov (Neutral Para Athlete) uncorking a monstrous 17.01m effort on his final try to claim gold.

The Russian-born athlete had managed 16.93 to take the lead from defending champion Yassine Guenichi (Tunisia) only to see the latter get his nose ahead with his last try.

Guenichi led the bunch of eight athletes after the first two rounds with throws of 16.57m and 16.74m but after Sviridov shot ahead in the fifth round, the Tunisian produced a 16.93m throw on his sixth attempt to lead on countback and clinched a maiden victory over the Russian-born two-time Paralympic Games champion.

In other events, Luka Ekler of Hungary won the women’s long jump T38 gold medal with a world record effort of 5.91m.

Jaydin Blackwell (USA, men’s 400m T38) and Oleksandr Yarovyi (Neutral Para Athlete, men’s shot put F20) were the other athletes who raised the number of world records set in five days of competition to 18.

Ekler, a two-time Paralympic Games long jump champion who had pegged the world record at 5.82m three years ago in Paris, was up against Angie Nicoll Mejia Morales and Karen Tatiana Palomque Moreno who had scored a 1-2 for Colombia in the 100m on Monday. But she lost no time in establishing her superiority.

She rewrote her own world record twice during the competition, leaping 5.86m on her second jump and improving to 5.91m on the fifth attempt.

Jaydin Blackwell, 21, ran a world record time of 48.00 seconds in the men’s 400m T38 final. Having won the 100m T38 with a championships record on Sunday, he brooked no challenge in cruising home to a handsome victory that saw him repeat his two-gold feat in the 2024 Kobe World Championships and 2024 Paris Paralympic Games. PTI PDS AM PDS AM AM