Prachi Yadav grabbed silver in canoeing in the Women's VL2 category, opening India's medal tally at the 4th Asian Para Games.
Indian para athlete Prachi Yadav has won silver in women's canoeing in the Women's VL2 category. Her medal was a first for India at the Asian Para Games 2023. Prachi had a close battle with Uzbekistan's Irodakhon Rustamova as both para athletes went neck-in-neck and were separated by a timing of 1.022 seconds. (More Sports News)
In the end, the Uzbekistan athlete clinched gold by clocking 1:02:125s whereas India's Prachi Yadav clocked 1:03.147s to grab a silver. Japan's Saki Komatsu grabbed a bronze with a timing of 1:11.63s.
Talking about Prachi, she recently won two Golds and one Silver at the Asian Paracanoe Championship 2023. She also won a bronze at the ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Cup in 2022. Not letting her physical ability get in her way, Prachi joined swimming as an exercise in 2007.
In 2015, Prachi trained under swimming coach VK Dabas, who suggested her to take up Para Canoe, due to her performance and body stature. Prachi later trained with Mayank Mathur in Bhopal for para canoe.
Her efforts soon came to fruition when in 2019 Prachi won her 1st gold medal and 1st silver medal in the Para Canoe Championship held in Delhi. Later in May 2019 she got a chance to attend her first international event, which was the World Cup held in Poznan, Poland where she got the 8th Rank in her category.
Prachi is also the first-ever Indian Paracanoe athlete to qualify for the 2020 Paralympics Games at Tokyo, Japan.