I aimed to stay a champion: Dharambir after missing gold at World Para Athletics C'ships

New Delhi: Paralympic champion Dharambir Nain overcame an hour-long rain delay to claim a club throw silver medal at the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships here at the JLN Stadium on Thursday.

Dharambir threw a distance of 29.71m to finish second behind Serbia's Aleksandar Radisic in the men's club throw F51 event, upgrading his bronze medal from the last edition to silver in front of a home crowd.

"It was very important for us to win a medal here in our home ground, otherwise it would have been a big disappointment for our contingent, " Dharambir told The Bridge after winning his second world medal.

Pressure of being a Paralympic champion

Dharambir won Gold in the event at the 2024 Paris Paralympics with a best throw of 34.92m and by virtue of being the reigning Paralympic champions, all eyes were on him.

"I was trying ki champion hu toh champion hi rahu [I'm a champion, so should stay as a champion]. But because of these conditions, I had to settle with silver only," said Dharmabir, when asked if there was extra pressure on him as a Paralympic champion.

He also acknowledged the fact that competition on the night was stiff.

"Everyone who came here to compete just had one aim in mind, that they wanted to do good for their country and win gold, but only one of us can win that."

While Dharambir was visibly a tad bit disappointed with his silver medal, his coach, Amit Saroha, was impressed with his ward's performance.

"As a Coach and mentor, I'm very, very happy with his performance in such horrible conditions, as being a defending Paralympic champion puts a lot of mental pressure on you."

Rain plays spoilsport

The rain caused distress to the athletes in the men's club throw event. Owing to the rain, the organizers had to stop the competition midway, and when action resumed, the field was soggy and made gripping the club a challenge for the athletes.

"If we can perform in such a worse condition, for me it's a bigger achievement than winning a gold medal, and as you saw, not only him but all the athletes were struggling to get a good distance," said the coach Amit.

That said, Amit and Dharambir did have a strategy to combat the issue.

"Our target was to do our best on the first throw itself, so we didn't take any warm-up throws, also as once the club lands on the ground, it gets wet and its glue stops working," explained Amit.

"Actually, we have trained in the wet conditions to counter rain; it was in our plan, but today the rain was too heavy, and hence, for sure, I will say it impacted the athletes, but we can say that our performance could have been much better," he added.

Uniform club size

As per Amit, there are a lot of differences in the clubs' size that every athlete was used to throwing, but for the first time, the organizing committee introduced a new rule mandating a uniform club size for all competitors.

"Since 2017, I've been saying that there is no equality in this event, and we even protest many times, which sometimes we won, but in some cases it got overruled," said Amit.

Amit explained that while the club's height, length, shape, size of tip and the lower portion have been marked, the middle portion was still variable - a loophole which has constantly been exploited by athletes. This, Amit mentioned, needs the attention of IPC.

"Today, we saw that they have implemented equality, but there are still some changes required for which IPC has to work and has to ban those clubs," he added.

Incidentally, in addition to coaching Dharambir, Amit also competes alongside him in the same event. An injury keep him away from these championships but he is set to return next year.

After a grueling season, Dharambir and Amit now plan to rest briefly before targeting a podium sweep at the 2026 Asian Para Games in Aichi–Nagoya, Japan.