Mariyappan Thangavelu is an Indian Para Athlete, high jumper, who represents Indian since 2016. He is a gold medalist in men’s high jump, T-42 category at Rio 2016 Paralympics. At the beginning of his career, he used to play volleyball for the utmost time, but his physical education instructor encouraged him to pursue his career in high-jump. At the first district-level competition, Mariyappan came second among the able-bodied competitors in 2013. This achievement inspired him a lot to chase his career in this field since then.

At that time, he kept continuing his studies as well along with his athletic practice and has completed his bachelor’s degree in Business Science in 2015. In 2016, he showed his best performance at the IPC Grand Prix qualifying championship at the high-jump T42 event.

His performance made his way in smartly to the Rio Paralympics, where he won a gold medal and became a proud flag bearer for India in that international championship. In 2018 again became the flag bearer in the Asian Para Games got an offer to be a coach with the Sports Authority of India for his contribution in Paralympics.

Mariyappan came from a poor family of India and he uses most of his cash prize to revive the poor living off his family instead of utilizing it for his better training bout.

(as Compiled by Madhushree Das Ghosh)(Profile Image from Facebook)