Praveen Kumar cleared 2.05 metres to win the men’s T64 high jump at the Asian Para Games and set a Games record. Banti took silver with a personal best of 1.92 metres, giving India a one-two finish in the event at Nagoya.
Nagoya, Japan: The Paris 2024 Paralympic champion arrived in Aichi-Nagoya with a Games record of his own to beat, and on Wednesday he beat it. Praveen Kumar went over 2.05 metres to win the men’s T64 high jump, three centimetres higher than the 2.02 metres he cleared to win the same title at Hangzhou in 2023.
A record, and one more to chase
The mark stands as a new Games record. It also sits three centimetres below Praveen’s own Asian record, a reminder of how much room the 23-year-old from Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district still has. He won Paralympic gold in Paris with a season-best 2.08 metres, and his 2025 season included a bronze at the World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi.
The T64 class covers athletes who compete with a prosthetic lower limb. At these Games it is contested together with T44, a combined event that gives the field enough depth for a fair competition.
Banti makes it a one-two
India took a second medal in the same final. Banti cleared 1.92 metres, a personal best, to claim silver and complete the Indian one-two.
India’s day at the athletics track
The high jump came one day after Nishad Kumar cleared 2.04 metres in the T47 event, another Games record for India’s jumpers. Elsewhere on Wednesday, Rakeshbhai Bhatt won bronze in the men’s 100m T37 in a personal best of 11.50 seconds, behind Saudi Arabia’s Ali Alnakhli, who won in 11.31, and Indonesia’s Saptoyogo Purnomo, who took silver in 11.35.
The results moved India to 41 medals at the time of reporting, 11 of them gold, 13 silver and 17 bronze, which left the country joint fifth in the table. That is up from the 35 medals and sixth place recorded in the day-two round-up.
Result: Men’s high jump T64, Asian Para Games, Aichi-Nagoya. Gold: Praveen Kumar (India), 2.05 m, Games record. Silver: Banti (India), 1.92 m, personal best.
