Nagoya: Teenage para swimmer Ravi Budigina completed a hat-trick of medals with a bronze in the men’s 50m freestyle S13 event as three other Indians also finished on the podium at the Asian Para Games here Thursday.
Kapil Kumar clinched silver, while Swatik Patil and Tejas Nandakumar bagged bronze medals in their respective events to take India’s medal haul to 10 in the swimming events. But a gold remained elusive.
Ravi had won silver medals in the men’s S13 100m backstroke and freestyle events earlier this week.
The visually impaired 18-year-old from Andhra Pradesh clocked 25.89 seconds to finish third in the 50m freestyle.
The 26-year-old Kapil clocked 4:38.44 to finish second behind Japan’s Akito Minai, who set a Games record en route to gold in the men’s 400m freestyle S10 event with a time of 4:27.44.
Iran’s Shahin Izadyar claimed bronze in the five-swimmer field with a time of 4:38.65.
Twenty-four-year-old Swatik clocked one minute and 13.77 seconds in the men’s 100m breaststroke SB9 to clinch another medal for India.
He finished behind the Iranian duo of Sina Zeyghaminejad (1:09.47) and Shahin Izadyar (1:13.23), who won gold and silver respectively.
The last Indian swimmer to take to the pool, Tejas clocked 1:18.58 to finish third in the men’s 100m backstroke S7 event, which is for athletes with physical impairments who have full control of their arms and trunk, limited leg function, or specific limb deficiencies
He finished behind China’s Jingsong Ruan, who set a Games record of 1:12.16 to win gold, and Singapore’s Soong Wei Toh (1:16.09), who took silver.
The Karnataka swimmer has a congenital condition affecting his legs.
The SB9 classification is for swimmers with minimal physical impairments, while S13 is for athletes with visual impairments who have the least vision loss among eligible competitors.
Meanwhile, swimmers in the S10 class typically have minimal physical impairments, such as weakness affecting their legs, missing feet, a leg missing below the knee or problems with their hips.
In Paralympic swimming, the prefixes S, SB and SM denote the stroke category. S applies to freestyle, backstroke and butterfly events, SB to breaststroke and SM to individual medley events.
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