It was the same look she carried at the start of her race at the 2026 Asian Para Games on Tuesday. Once Deepthi Jeevanji crossed the finish line, she bent over to catch her breath for a few moments. Once she got back up, her facial expression betrayed no real emotion. She sprinted through the course of the lap in the women’s 400m T20 final at the Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium.
A high jumper by expertise, he expanded his horizons on the first day of the Asian Para Games when he won gold in the men’s T47 long jump event. This was not, however, unexpected. Deepthi competes in the T20 sprinting event which is designated for athletes with intellectual impairments. Not a bad return from someone whose parents had once been pressured by villagers to abandon her as a child. Deepthi was born with an intellectual disability to a poor farming family in the village of Kalleda in the Warangal district of Telangana. The tests declared that she could compete in the T20 category at para athletic meets, setting her on the course to becoming one of the many trailblazers in the sport in India. In the men’s discus throw, there were a few more gold medals in store across categories.
For Deepthi, the latest medal adds to her growing list of accolades that now includes two Asian Para Games gold medals, a gold and silver World Championship medal, and a bronze won at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. On Day 2 though, in his pet event that has seen him win back-to-back silver medals at the Tokyo and Paris Paralympics, the reigning World Championship gold medallist defended his T47 high jump crown. He jumped 1.98m to ensure the gold, but then raised the bar to set a new Asian Para Games record by clearing 2.04m. In the F51-53 event, Pranav Soorma and Ram Ratan Singh made it a gold-silver finish for India. Soorma, who had won gold in the men’s F51 club throw event at the previous edition – also winning silver in the same event at the Paris Paralympics – set the new Asian record in the discus event with an effort of 11.66. Ram Ratan’s effort of 10.35 earned him the silver medal. And in the singles across the table tennis events, India won five bronze medals through Sonalben Patel (women’s singles Class 3), Bhavina Patel (women’s singles Class 4-5), Prachi Pandey (women’s singles Class 6), Sahana Ravi (women’s singles Class 9) and men’s singles Class 1 competitor Jehan Madan.
It’s a condition that her parents had said did not allow her to ever be truly expressive of her feelings. Villagers would taunt her and her family and often told her parents to send her to an orphanage. Gopichand had told Ramesh to have her tested at the National Institute for the Empowerment of Person with Intellectual Disability in Hyderabad, where they trained.
