On Monday, the 19-year-old Avani Lekhara created history when she became the first Indian woman to win a gold medal at the Paralympics after dominating in the R-2 women's 10m Air Rifle Standing SH1 event in Tokyo, Japan.

The Jaipur-born shooter’s final score of 249.6 was not only equal to the world record but also a new Paralympic record.

Phenomenal performance @AvaniLekhara! Congratulations on winning a hard-earned and well-deserved Gold, made possible due to your industrious nature and passion towards shooting. This is truly a special moment for Indian sports. Best wishes for your future endeavours.

Avani Lekhara’s Journey To Tokyo Paralympic Gold In Tokyo

As a child, Avani was a talented dancer who would bag trophies and awards in dancing. However, a horrible car crash in 2012 caused serious injuries to her spinal cord and the wheelchair became a prominent part of her life.

Without regretting the changes that were brought into her life after that one horrific incident, Avani decided to try out different sports that she thought she would be good at. She even considered archery before finally taking up shooting after reading India's first Olympic Gold Medallist Abhinav Bindra’s autobiography A Shot at History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold.

Her first experience with a rifle came back in 2015 at the Jagatpura Sports Complex in Jaipur and with the kind of work and effort she put into her craft, it took her just two years to make her international debut at the Para Shooting World Cup in Al Ain in UAE (2017).

She started her international career with a silver medal too. She bagged another silver at the Para Shooting World Cup in Osijek in Croatia in 2019. And earlier this year in March, the Avani got her first gold medal at the inaugural National Para-shooting championships in the women's R2 10m air rifle women's SH1.

“It is every athlete’s dream (to win gold for their country at the Olympics) and it was the same for me as well. For the last five years, I have been looking forward to representing India at the Paralympics and I finally got the chance today. I did not care about the medal tally, I just wanted to focus on my performance one shot at a time and now I am feeling as if I am on top of the world,” Avani told Sports Tak (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zLvNhx9enA) shortly after winning the top spot at the podium.

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