LAHORE, Pakistan (Dunya News) – Para-athlete Haider Ali of Pakistan has won Pakistan’s first gold medal in the discus throw sport at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
Haider Ali scored the greatest distance with a 55.26 metre throw on his fifth try out of a total of six.
Zhabnyak of Ukraine won silver with a throw of 52.43 metres, while Teixeira de Souza of Brazil took bronze with a throw of 51.86 metres.
Anila Izzat Baig and Haider Ali, both Pakistani competitors, competed in the Tokyo Paralympics this year.
Ali became Pakistan’s final chance for a medal when Anila Baig was disqualified for not winning any. He competed in the F37 Discus Throw discipline and earned Pakistan’s first Paralympic gold.
Haider has previously won two medals in the long jump event for Pakistan, a silver in Beijing in 2008 and a bronze in Rio in 2016.
In 2019, he competed in the World Para-Athletics Championships in Dubai, where he earned a silver medal for Pakistan in the discus throw.
Haider Ali is a cerebral palsy sufferer from Gujranwala. It is a condition in which one area of a person’s body gets weaker than the rest. He was born with a limb-length difference. His right leg is two inches shorter than his left leg and two inches thinner.
The F37 category is open to all para-athletes with cerebral palsy.
The United States Embassy in Islamabad congratulated Haider Ali on earning Pakistan’s first-ever Paralympic gold medal.
Meanwhile, Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, Pakistan’s Minister of Information and Broadcasting, said in a tweet that Pakistan is proud of Haider Ali.
