JakartaPost-Oct 29
Indonesia finished sixth overall at the Asian Para Games in Hangzhou, China, with 26 gold medals, exceeding its initial target of 19 golds and making the top 10. The Indonesian contingent consisted of 134 athletes who competed in 12 sports from Oct. 22 to 28. The team also won 21 silver medals and 32 bronze medals, making for its highest achievement since the 2018 Asian Para Games in Jakarta, when the country finished fifth overall with 37 gold, 47 silver and 51 bronze medals. Indonesia was the highest ranking Southeast Asian country in the final tally at Hangzhou, followed by Thailand and the Philippines in seventh and ninth place, respectively. China ranked first with a total of 521 medals. At Hangzhou, eight new Asian Para Games records, three Asian records and two world records were set by Indonesian athletes. Para athlete Partin Muhlisin won the gold medal in the men’s 100m-T42 sprint, setting the Asian Para Games record of 12.24 seconds. He also won a silver medal in the men’s long jump-T63. The T42 and T63 categories are for athletes with a single above-the-knee disability who compete in running or jumping. “I’m so happy with my result, not to mention that this gold medal is also my first medal in Asia-level competition,” Partin told The Jakarta Post on Saturday. “My hope for people with disabilities is that we should not let our limitations become a barrier for us to excel in life, be it in terms of sports, education or many other things,” he said. Slamet Widodo, the athletics coach at the National Paralympic Committee (NPC), said the athletes had “achieved the best because of their hard work during training and their maximum effort during competition”. “We will now evaluate how we competed [in Hangzhou] so that we can fix our shortcomings, and hopefully we will perform better [in the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, France],” Slamet told the Post on Saturday. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/sports/2023/10/29/indonesia-surpasses-target-with-26-gold-medals-at-hangzhou-para-games.html.
