tokyo praveen kumar never imagined being a paralympic silvermedallist at 18 but being a driven athlete the highjumper left no stone unturned to get to this moment either even if it meant creating a makeshift practice area for himself when covid19 lockdowns caused closure of stadiumspraveen son of a poor farmer at a village near jewar in gautam buddha nagar district clinched the silver medal in the mens high jump t64t44 event of the paralympics by setting a new asian record of 207m this morningthe youngster had battled covid19 and also its effect on his training last year desperate to train for the games here praveen had dug up a small pit near his house and filled it with soft mud to ensure he could carry on practising despite not having access to a landing mattresshe created the space to ensure that his knees did not take too much of a beatingmy school life was mostly about sports but at that time i did not know i will reach this level one day i was playing volleyball initially in school but then slowly came to know of para athletics and took up high jump praveen said during a virtual press conference organised by eurosport and paralympic committee of indiai came to know about paralympics and how to take part in it after searching on google added the high jumper whose congenital impairment affects the bones that connect his hip to his left legexplaining how he came to rise to this level praveen said i took part in a district level competition where i met ashok saini sir who gave me phone number of satyapal sir his current coachi contacted satyapal sir and then he found out in which classification i will compete he identified me and said he will take me in this was 2018 said praveen who is a ba second year student in the motilal nehru college in delhipraveen who is in his second year in the international circuit said fellow students and teachers of his school wondered how he will do well in his sport given his impairment but they later began supporting himi won a silver in junior para athletics world championships in 2019 and won gold in the para athletics grand prix earlier this year in dubai so people started supporting mehe finished fourth in the para athletics senior world championships in 2019talking about fridays competition he said i was a bit low in confidence when i cleared 197m in my second attempt but i regained confidence after jumping 201m i told myself i will give my best whatever it takes whether rain or notthere was pressure while trying to jump 210m in the final attempt i just thought of doing my best and it was a very good attempt but there was some problems in my landing and so i could not clear it said praveen who was congratulated by prime minister narendra modi on phonehis coach satyapal said he had some reservation about