Canada Para Badminton: Joshi, Ramadass bag gold; Pramod Bhagat wins silver as India sign off with 9 medals

Ottawa (Canada), June 13

Indian para shuttlers continued their great run of form as they clinched nine medals including two gold by Manasi Joshi and Manisha Ramadass at the Canada International Para Badminton in Ottawa. However, Paralympic gold medallist Pramod Bhagat had to settle for the silver going down fighting against his arch rival Daniel Bethell 14-21, 21-9, 15-21. This was Bhagat's second defeat to England's Paralympic silver medallist since the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Joshi, the reigning world champion in women's SL3, displayed an impeccable performance winning all her round robin matches over fellow Indian Parul Parmar, France's Coraline Bergeron, Noriko Ito of Japan and Ukrainian Oksana Kozyna.

While Joshi was hardly troubled by her first three opponents, she faced a strong challenge from Oksana. The Ukrainian rallied from a game down to take the second game and fought it out till the end before Joshi nailed it with a 21-18, 15-21, 22-20 win. This was Joshi's fourth title win in the women's singles event this season.

"Extremely delighted to be winning Gold in Singles & Bronze in Mixed Doubles with @RUTHICK_INDIA at Canada para-badminton international. With this my one month tour to the Middle East & North America ends," tweeted Joshi, who also claimed the mixed doubles SL3-SU5 bronze with Ruthick Ragupathi.

Like Joshi, Ramadass too followed her Fazza Dubai 2022 International title triumph winning the women's singles SU5 gold medal. The 17-year-old from Chennai kept her composure and fought it out to pull off a thrilling 27-25, 21-9 win over Japan's Akiko Sugino in the final.

At Dubai too, the Ramadass defeated Sugino in straight games for the gold. This was her fourth women's singles gold in the SU5 category this season.

Tokyo gold medallist Pramod Bhagat clinched the silver medal in the Men's Singles SL3 event. The ace shuttler went down to England's Daniel Bethell.

The 1 hour 6 minutes match was a closely contested match which went all the way down to the wire. The World No 1 went down 14-21 in the opening set but came back strongly to win the second set 21-09. The third set was closely fought and Bethell held his nerve to win the decider 21-15. The ace shuttler gave it all but fell short and had to settle for silver medal.

Pramod Bhagat continued his brilliant run of ending up in the medals tally, he had recently won 2 golds at Bahrain Para Badminton International and also another gold at the 4th Fazza Dubai Para Badminton International in Dubai

Among other medallists are: Nitesh Kumar (Men's Singles SL3), Parul Parmar (Women's Singles SL3), Tarun Dhillon (Men's Singles SL4), Ruthick Raghupathi (Men's Singles SU5) and Tarun Dhillon (Men's Doubles SL3-SL4) who claimed the bronze medal in their respective categories.

--IANS