A year after Paralympic heartbreak, Shailesh Kumar finds redemption, wins India’s first gold at 2025 World Para Athletics Championships
His competition at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru stadium on Saturday might have ended with the unfortunate clatter of the high jump bar – a third failure with the bar set at 1.94m – but Shailesh Kumar had a big smile on his face. His job was already done by that point.
He had already cleared a height of 1.91m to win the gold in the T63 category of the men’s high jump at the Para Athletics World Championships. In doing so, he had not only set a new Championships record but had also beaten the reigning Paralympic champion Ezra Frech of the USA.
A few minutes later, draped in the Indian tricolour, Shailesh must have felt at least a moment of redemption as he took a victory lap of the stadium.
“It feels very good,” Shailesh would say after winning India’s first gold.
A year ago, Shailesh Kumar suffered a heartbreak as he finished just outside the podium by the barest of margins at the Paris Paralympics. As a T-42 athlete – a category comprising athletes with physical disability in the lower limbs, the then 24-year-old was already at a disadvantage competing in the T-62 category – a category featuring athletes with a far lower degree of disadvantage.
Although Shailesh jumped 1.85m in Paris, the same height as fellow Indian, Mariyappan Thangavelu, his compatriot was given the bronze medal for having taken fewer jumps to clear the same height. Another Indian, Sharad Kumar, took silver.
It was Frech of the USA who had taken the victory lap then.
READ: Shailesh Kumar wins India’s first gold medal at World Para Athletics Championships 2025
Shailesh had returned home in disappointment. He took a break from the sport. At first, it was one week. That turned into two. Soon, it had been two months.
It was his parents who ultimately got him to stop moping. “I was really demotivated when I came back from Paris. But my parents told me it was just my first Paralympics. They told me it’s okay to take a break, but it’s not okay to give up,” he’d say.
Two and a half months after he missed out at Paris, Shailesh returned to train. “I started from zero once again. I returned to train at the Sports Authority of India in Bangalore. When I came back, I had a target. I wanted to become the World Champion,” he says.
Starting from zero is probably an overstatement. Even finishing fourth at a Paralympics might have seemed a long way off from where Shailesh had originally started.
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His sporting journey began in Islampur in the town of Jamui, Bihar. His state isn’t known for track and field prowess. Jamui and Islampur, even less so. The opportunities might have seemed even more stark for Shailesh, who lived with a physical disability in his right leg caused by a bout of polio in his childhood. But Shailesh was motivated by his classmates and school. He began competing in the high jump at the school level. He had a natural gift for jumping.
“At that time, I didn’t even know about para sports. I competed as an able-bodied athlete. I even competed and won a gold medal at the Bihar state sub-junior championships among able-bodied athletes. It was only then that some seniors told me to try competing in paraathletics,” he says.
By 2019, he was competing and rising fast as a para athlete. The same year, he won gold at the junior world championships and was included as part of the Target Olympic Podium Scheme, the Government programme to fund potential Olympic and Paralympic winners.
He was expected to be one. A silver at the Paris World Championships in 2023 was another milestone towards that destination that he ultimately never did reach.
His time will come. Shailesh believes it as well. But for now he’s happy to take in this reassurance of his worth and ability.
“I’m really proud I could win a gold for India,” he says.
Published on Sep 27, 2025