Vinod Kumar from India declared ineligible at Paralympics, his bronze medal taken back

Aug 31: Vinod Kumar from India won Bronze in Men’s Discus Throw (F52) at Paralympics, Tokyo 2020 on 29 August, 2021. However, soon after that the Paralympics organisation in an official statement stated, “The result of the Men’s Discus F52 event in which Vinod Kumar won bronze medal is under review.” It was indeed a shock for the sports fraternity of India.

Finally, on 30 August, Tokyo Paralympics Official communication informed that athlete Vinod Kumar is ineligible for the Men’s F52 Discus medal event and his results in that competition are void. “Following classification Observation Assessment in competition and subsequent re-assessment by the classification panel, the panel was unable to allocate the athlete Vinod Kumar from NPC India with a sport class and the athlete was designated as Classification not Completed (CNC). The athlete is therefore ineligible for the Men’s F52 Discus medal event and his results in that competition are void,” stated Tokyo Paralympics Official communication.

“Following re-assessment by the classification panel,athlete #VinodKumar is ineligible for the Men’s F52 Discus medal event and his results in that competition are void”: Tokyo Paralympics Official communication #ParalympicsTokyo2020 #Paralympics https://t.co/HoGQByYlyR pic.twitter.com/Jmqce1PC46

— All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) August 30, 2021

Netizens expressed deep anger at this and one of them wrote, “This is the responsibility of the national classifiers. The country need to see that the players are correctly classified before sending them. But sadly, due to the conditions of para sports in India, we don’t have many para-sports classifiers.” Another twitterati wrote, “I am still wondering… these assessments should have been done before getting into competition. Right?”