Day 9 round up of Asian nations at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games

• Iran’s men win historic eighth Sitting Volleyball title
• JIANG makes it six
• Pakistan win their first medal in Paris
• Powerlifters in world record breaking form
• Japan’s wheelchair tennis queen KAMIJI wins her second gold of the games.

Iran’s Men’s Sitting Volleyball team were crowned Paralympic champions for the third successive games in a row, making this the eighth Paralympic title they have won. They went a set down to Bosnia and Herzegovina but won the next three to claim the gold medal. The world’s tallest Paralympian Morteza Mehrzadselakjani was top point scorer for Iran.

Iran’s Meisam Ali Pour  said; “Our team deserved to win this Paralympic gold medal. It was somewhat hard, but it was one of the most interesting matches. Morteza can be considered as one of the most important players in the world. He knows what to do, he’s the best spiker, and whenever possible he will be able to get points, but it doesn’t mean that he’s going to do it all by himself. We have another player, Ramezan Salehihajikolaei who is a good setter. He sets the ball for Morteza to spike. The whole team has cooperated together to become Paralympic champions.”

In the pool, JIANG Yuyan added an incredible sixth gold medal to her Paris tally, winning gold in the Women’s 400m Freestyle S6. Then teammates GUO Jincheng (Men’s 50m Butterfly S5) and LU Dong (Women’s 50m Butterfly S5) broke the World Record on their way to claiming their fourth gold medals of the Games. Japan’s KIMURA Keiichi broke the Paralympic record on the way to winning his second gold of the games in the Men’s 100m Butterfly S11 with SUZUKI Tatayuki taking silver in the Men’s 50m Freestyle S4 to claim his fourth games medal.

There were World Records galore in Para Powerlifting competition.

Malaysia’s Bonnie Bunyau GUSTIN broke the World Record en route to winning the Men’s -72kg final. He improved his own record set in Dubai 2023 with a powerful lift of 232 kg.

Gustin’s gold with a world record effort was followed by China’s TAN Yujiao (142) and Iran’s Roohallah ROSTAMI (242), improving their own World Records with gold medals in the Women’s up to 67kg and Men’s up to 80kg events.  This was Yujiao’s third gold medal while Rostami got his second.

At the Para Athletics, Uzbekistan’s YULDASHEV Tolibboy won gold in the Men’s Discus Throw F37 adding to the bronze he won in the Shot Put earlier in the games. In the same event, Haider ALI, the only athlete to ever win a Paralympic medal for Pakistan, won bronze, taking his total Paralympic medal haul to four. Iran’s KOSRAVI won gold in the Men’s Shot Put F57 and China won gold in the 4 x 100m Universal Relay.

Japan’s Wheelchair Tennis ace Yui KAMIJI beat de GROOT of the Netherlands in the Women’s Singles final, claiming her second gold medal of the games. She lost the first set but came back to win 6-4, 3-6, 4-6.  Her teammates MIKI/ODA had to settle for silver in the Men’s Doubles, losing 6-2 6-1 to Great Britain’s Hewett/Reid. ODA will have the chance for revenge when he faces HEWETT in the Men’s Singles final on Saturday 7^th.

In Para Judo, Japan won two gold medals (Junko HIROSE in the Women’s -57kg J2, Yijiro SETO Men’s -73kg J2).

At the end of the ninth day of competition, the Asian nations’ medal table looks like this;

Day 9
Rank on overall table	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	China	83	64	41	188
10	Japan	12	10	15	37
12	Uzbekistan	9	8	6	23
16	I.R. Iran	6	10	6	22
17	India	6	9	12	27
18	Thailand	6	9	11	26
20	Republic of Korea	5	10	13	28
29	Hong Kong, China	3	4	1	8
35	Kazakhstan	2	3	2	7
38	Malaysia	2	1	1	4
40	Singapore	2	1	0	3
45	Indonesia	1	7	5	13
53	Mongolia	1	2	0	3
57	Jordan	1	0	0	1
57	Saudi Arabia	1	0	0	1
66	Chinese Taipei	0	3	2	5
71	Sri Lanka	0	1	0	1
75	Iraq	0	0	2	2
74	Kuwait	0	0	1	1
74	Nepal	0	0	1	1
77	Pakistan	0	0	1	1
77	Vietnam	0	0	1	1