How Harvinder Singh rode cruel fate that impaired his left leg and claimed Paralympics gold and a PhD

In 1992, when farmer Paramjeet Singh took his 18-months-old son Harvinder to a local clinic for treating an illness, he hardly knew the turn his son’s life would take. “The doctor gave him the wrong injection, which resulted in the impairment in his left leg,” says Paramjeet, a resident of Ajitgarh village in Haryana’s Kaithal district.

The painful memories passed through his mind on the day, nearly three decades and several other twists later, his son claimed gold in the men’s recurve open event in Paris Paralympics, beating Poland’s .Lukasz Ciszek 6-0. “To see him win his second Paralympic medal and this time a gold helps us erase memories of that day in 1992,” Paramjeet tells The Indian Express.

The impairment kept him mostly indoor and bound to the textbooks—recently he completed his doctorate in labour reforms. “When he grew up, his only interest was getting good marks in studies. Even the reason he showed interest in archery was because the score (tens) fascinated him,” he says.

Harvinder Singh has struck gold with unmatched precision in the Para Archery Men’s Individual Recurve Open at #Paralympics2024! 🥇🎯

This monumental victory marks him as the first-ever Gold Medalist in Para Archery 🏹 at the Paralympics, embodying the vision of our PM Shri… pic.twitter.com/ztQc8t947D

— Dr Mansukh Mandaviya (@mansukhmandviya) September 4, 2024

Watching archery events during 2012 London Olympics further stoked his interest. Soon he enrolled at the Punjabi University in Patiala, where he bumped into coach Jiwanjot Singh Teja and began training under coach Gaurav Sharma too. Initially, he competed in compound events, once competing with a bow used by Abhishek Verma, an Asian Games medallist. Three years later, in 2015, he switched to recurve. Teja dusts up those days to The Indian Express: “He was a good archer in the compound. But when we decided to make Harvinder compete in recurve, the main challenge was to work on his posture and balance. Since he suffers the impairment in his left leg and recurve archery sees more than 60 percent of body weight falling on the left leg, our task was to make the right leg take the load,” remembers coach teja while speaking with The Indian Express.

Persistence and discipline took time to bear fruits. He clinched multiple medals in para nationals in 2016 and 2017, but managed only a seventh place in World Para Archery Championship in 2017. An year later, arrived the breakthrough, when he clinched gold in Jakarta 2018 Para Asian Games by scoring a 6-0 win over Chinese Zhao Lixue.

He didn’t turn back. Three years later, he nabbed bronze in Tokyo Paralympics with a 6-5 shoot-off win over Korea’s Kim Min Su, which was India’s first archery medal in Paralympics.

Harvinder Singh with wife Manpreet Kaur and son Waris Singh

Self-made, studious

Before Tokyo, during the pandemic that has shut all training facilities, Singh used to train at the family farm. “I was planning to compete in Korea after training in the USA but the lockdown didn’t let me. Since the wheat season was over, my father ploughed a major portion of our farm to make the archery field for me to train. Also coach Gaurav Sharma made me simulate shoot-off conditions too,” the archer had told this paper.

The archer, who just had two top ten finishes in international tournaments in the last two years— apart from a team bronze medal in Hangzhou—had to juggle with the tedious process of completing his PhD earlier this year from Punjabi University, Patiala. Coach Gaurav Sharma, who is with the Indian archery team in Paris, had talked to this paper about Harvinder’s love for academics: “Between good and bad shooting days, he would always pick his books to relax. That has helped him a lot in keeping the pressure off from his mind.”

In Paris, Singh first scored a 7-3 win over Chinese Taepei Lh Tseng before scoring a 6-2 win over S Setiawan of Indonesia in pre-quarters, In quarters, he scored a 6-2 win over Columbian Ramirez before Ameri Arab of Iran 7-3 to enter the finals. “He did not let the pressure of being a Tokyo medallist affect him and showed his eagerness to improve the colour of the medal,” says Teja.

Throughout the campaign, he showed incredible composure, Teja observed. “ There were five instances where he needed ten out of final shot to win the set. He hit ten out of ten in all the instances. We had been practising single arrow practice instead of three arrows. He showed his patience and skill of single scores,” Teja says.

As Harvinder hit the bull’s eye for glory, his household—parents Paramjeet and Harbhajan Kaur, siblings Sandeep Kaur and Arshdeep Singh, Harvinder’s wife Manpreet and 20-months-old son Waris are waiting for his return. “When he is not training, he loves to spend time in the library of Punjabi University. This time we will make sure that he enjoys the celebrations,” says Paramjeet.

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