Asian Para Games: Ravi Budigina completes medal hat-trick as India win three more

Teenage Indian para swimmer Ravi Budigina completed a hat-trick of medals with a bronze in the men's 50m freestyle S13 event as two other Indians also finished on the podium at the Asian Para Games here on Thursday.

Ravi had won silver medals in the men's S13 100m backstroke and freestyle events earlier this week.

The visually impaired 18-year-old from Andhra Pradesh clocked 25.89 seconds to finish third in the 50m freestyle.

Kapil Kumar clinched silver while Swatik Patil bagged bronze in their respective events to take India's medal haul to nine.

The 26-year-old Kapil clocked 4:38.44s to finish second behind Japan's Akito Minai, who set a Games record en route to gold in the men's 400m freestyle S10 event with a time of 4:27.44s.

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

Twenty-four-year-old Swatik clocked one minute and 13.77 seconds in the men's 100m breaststroke SB9 to clinch another medal for India.

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

The SB9 classification is for swimmers with minimal physical impairments, while S13 is for athletes with vision impairment who have the least vision loss among eligible competitors.

Meanwhile, 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.

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

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