Swimmer Kapil Kumar Wins Silver in Asian Para Games

Nagoya: Kapil Kumar clinched the silver while Swatik Patil bagged the bronze medal in their respective events as Indian swimmers continued their medal-winning run at the Asian Para Games here on Thursday. The 26-year-old Kapil clocked 4:38.44 to finish second behind Japan's Akito Minai, who smashed the Games record en route to his gold in 4:27.44 in the men's 400m freestyle S10 event.

Iran's Shahin Izadyar bagged the bronze in the five-swimmer field with a time of 4:38.65.

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.

Twenty-four-year-old Swatik then swam the 100m breaststroke SB9 in one minute and 13.77 seconds to clinch India's eighth medal of the Games.

He finished behind the Iranian duo of Sina Zeyghaminejad (1:09.47) and Shahin Izadyar (1:13.23), who won the gold and silver medals respectively.

SB9 represents athletes with minimal physical impairments, meaning the least physical disability or highest ability level among the physical classification spectrum.

In Paralympic swimming, the prefixes S, SB and SM denote the stroke category. S applies to freestyle, backstroke and butterfly events, SB to breaststroke events and SM to individual medley events.