New Delhi, Sept 5: India’s Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj fetched a silver medal after a challenging fight with top seed Lucas Mazur of France in the men’s singles SL4 class final at the Tokyo Paralympics on Sunday.

Yathiraj is a Collector by profession and a shuttler by profession. He is at present,the Collector and District Magistrate(DM) of Goutam Budha Nagar(GB Nagar) in Noida. He is the first-ever IAS officer to win a medal at the Paralympics.

The 38-year-old Suhas, who has an impairment in one of his ankles, led 11-10 at the decider, but just couldn’t dial down the aggression, getting carried away in the big points. Lucas Mazur kept his calm and raced to win decider 21-15. The left-handed angles and end-game poise helped as the Frenchman claimed gold.

Suhas had lost to Mazur, who has won three gold medals in European Championships as well, in the qualifying group-A match but made a tremendous effort in the final to challenge his world No. 1 opponent in the battle of pride.

Before the Paralympics, Suhas had become National Champion after winning Gold Medal in Men’s Singles category at 2nd National Para Badminton Championships held at Varanasi in March 2018.

Similarly, in 2016, At the 2016 Asian Para Badminton Championships, Beijing. He was the first Indian bureaucrat to win a professional International Badminton Championship.^[

He won a gold, beating Hary Susanto of Indonesia in the finals when he was serving as District Magistrate of Azamgarh. He came to International court when he won gold and became first ever serving IAS to represent and win a medal for India globally.

Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj was born to Yathiraj L K (late) and Jayashree C S at Hassan in Karnataka. He graduated from National Institute of Technology, Surathkal in Computer Science and Engineering in 2004 by scoring First class with Distinction.