Misery to history: Bhavina Patel’s challenging journey to glory – In Pics
Try and try again till you succeed, seems to be the motto of Indian para table tennis player Bhavina Patel. The 34-year-old on Sunday bagged silver medal in table tennis at the Paralympic Games after losing the gold medal match to China's Zhou Ying 3-0 in the women's singles.
Try and try again till you succeed, seems to be the motto of Indian para table tennis player Bhavina Patel. The 34-year-old on Sunday bagged silver medal in table tennis at the Paralympic Games after losing the gold medal match to China's Zhou Ying 3-0 in the women's singles.
World number one Zhou Ying overwhelmed Bhavina Patel in straight sets by 3-0 (11-7, 11-5, 11-6) in just 19 minutes. With this silver medal, Bhavina became the first medal winner for India in this edition of the Games. She is also the first table tennis player ever to win a medal at the Paralympics for India and the second female athlete after PCI chief Deepa Malik to achieve the feat. Malik had won silver at Rio 2016 in women's shot put.
Bhavina made her international debut in 2009 at Jordan and won her first medal in 2011, a silver by beating her Chinese opponent at the Para Table Tennis Thailand Open.
There was no stopping her as Bhavina won a historic silver medal, India's first, in Asian Regional Championship in 2013. She continuously playing international tournaments in various countries like Jordan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Germany, Indonesia, Slovenia, Thailand, Spain, the Netherlands, and Egypt but a gold medal continued to elude her.
Bhavina continued to try, working hard to improve her game and she finally bagged her first gold medal -- in singles at the International Para Table Tennis Championship in Bangkok, Thailand in 2019.
In between, the 34-year-old Bhavina continued to suffer setbacks. The 34-year-old ESIC employee based at Ahmedabad had qualified for the Rio 2016 Paralympics but could not play because of a technicality. She was India's best hope in para TT at the 2010 Commonwealth Games but lost in the quarterfinals. But Bhavina maintained her composure and continued to try harder, and harder and after so much of misery, she created history at Tokyo Paralympics.
Take a look at Bhavina’s challenging journey to glory:
Bhavina Patel
Bhavina Patel
Bhavina Patel
Coming from a middle-class background, her father could not get her treated when she was young. Though he had to take care of a family of five, he managed to get Bhavana operated upon at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh but the surgery did not yield desired results as Bhavana was careless and did not follow the rehab procedure properly.
Bhavina Patel
Bhavina Patel
Having taken up table tennis around 2004 to maintain fitness, the sport became Bhavina's passion. After three years of hard work and practice, she won her first national title in Para Table Tennis Nationals in Bangalore in 2007 and that set her on a course that has taken her to the Tokyo 2020 and a place in India's Paralympic Games history as the first table tennis player to win a medal.
