Canada International Para Badminton: Joshi, Ramadass bag gold as India sign off with 9 medals

Indian para shuttlers continued their great run of form as they clinched nine medals including two gold medals by Manasi Joshi and Manisha Ramadass at the Canada International Para Badminton in Ottawa.

Joshi, the reigning world champion in women’s SL3, displayed an impeccable performance winning all her round robin matches over fellow Indian Parul Parmar, France's Coraline Bergeron, Noriko Ito of Japan and Ukrainian Oksana Kozyna.

While Joshi was hardly troubled by her first three opponents, she faced a strong challenge from Oksana. The Ukrainian rallied from a game down to take the second game and fought it out till the end before Joshi nailed it with a 21-18, 15-21, 22-20 win. This was Joshi's fourth title win in the women's singles event this season.

“Extremely delighted to be winning Gold in Singles & Bronze in Mixed Doubles with @RUTHICK_INDIA at Canada para-badminton international. With this my one month tour to the Middle East & North America ends,” tweeted Joshi, who also claimed the mixed doubles SL3-SU5 bronze with Ruthick Ragupathi.

Like Joshi, Ramadass too followed her Fazza Dubai 2022 International title triumph winning the women’s singles SU5 gold medal. The 17-year-old from Chennai kept her composure and fought it out to pull off a thrilling 27-25, 21-9 win over Japan’s Akiko Sugino in the final.

At Dubai too, the Ramadass defeated Sugino in straight games for the gold. This was her fourth women’s singles gold in the SU5 category this season.

However, Paralympic gold medallist Pramod Bhagat had to settle for the silver going down fighting against his arch rival Daniel Bethell 14-21, 21-9, 15-21. This was Bhagat’s second defeat to England's Paralympic silver medallist since the Tokyo 2020 Games.  

Among other medallists are: Nitesh Kumar (Men's Singles SL3), Parul Parmar (Women's Singles SL3), Tarun Dhillon (Men's Singles SL4), Ruthick Raghupathi (Men's Singles SU5) and Tarun Dhillon (Men's Doubles SL3-SL4) who claimed the bronze medal in their respective categories