Palesha Olympics by winning the Asia Qualifier

With this achievement, Palesha has become the third Nepali athlete to reach the Olympics. Earlier, Sangina Vaidya played in the 2004 Greece Olympics and Deepak Bist played in the 2008 Beijing Olympics after passing the Asian qualifying stage. "You should always be positive, you have to play to win, you have to win gold," was the reaction of Palesha, excited by the latest achievement.

In the women's 57 kg weight group of the K-44 category, she defeated Iran's Mirzai by a score of 5-4 in the final. Although Mirzai took the early lead, Palesha made a brilliant comeback in the match. Before that, Palesha defeated Uzbekistan's Karima Melikujieva by a wide margin of 18-2 and submitted a strong claim for gold. Palesha is the same athlete who won the bronze medal in the 4th Para Asian Games held in Hangzhou, China this year. Which was the first Para Asiad medal won by Nepal.

"I was selected for the Paris Paralympics, I won a gold for the country, I hope I can win a gold in Paris too," Palesha said to Kantipur, "I want to thank everyone from my family to the coaches, the taekwondo association, who have supported me and encouraged me." This would not have been possible without your support. Palesha is going to play the Olympics for the second time. She played for the first time in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics held in Japan. At that time, she reached the Tokyo Paralympics through a wild card entry instead of qualifying. Due to the covid-19 epidemic, his trip was made possible by the wild card after he was unable to go to the Asian qualifiers due to the suspension of international flights. At that time she created history by winning two Olympic games.

In the final of the repechage for the bronze medal, Palesha was left without a medal after a narrow 12-9 loss to world number two Yuji Li of China. At that time, her chances of reaching the final were over after losing to Britain's Beth Munro in the first match. However, despite the loss, there was an opportunity for repechage. A bronze medal was obtained from it. She reached the final by defeating Brianna Salinara of America 10–0 in the quarterfinals of the repechage and Masija Missev of Serbia 23–18 in the semifinals. However, in the finals, the Chinese player could not get rid of Li.

His coach Kaviraj Kaviraj Negi Lama said that Palesha opened the door for a medal in the Paris Paralympics from China, "Before this we played the Olympics as a wild card." This year, Palesha has been selected after winning the Asian gold to lead the country. I hope he will do another miracle in Paris. Lama, who has been training Palesha for a long time, is an international level-2 para taekwondo instructor.

Palesha's medal journey

Palesha, who won gold in the 2nd Kathmandu Garogi and Pumsey International Taekwondo Tournament held in Kathmandu in 2018, started her international medal winning journey by winning bronze in the 4th Asian Para Taekwondo Championship held in Vietnam in 2018. Then she won the gold medal at the Asian Youth Para Games in Bahrain in 2021.

Palesha, who was born without the lower part of her left wrist, started playing taekwondo at the age of 10. She joined the para national team since 2016. Then, as her first international competition, she finished fifth at the 3rd Asian Para Taekwondo Championship in Chuncheon, South Korea in 2017. Palesha from Baghbazar, Kathmandu, won the fifth place in the World Para Taekwondo 2017 in London, the fifth Asian Para Open Taekwondo 2019 in Jordan and the test event of the Paralympic Games 2019 in Tokyo. Palesha, who was ninth in the eighth World Para Taekwondo held in Turkey in 2019, also participated in the World Para Taekwondo Grand Prix held in Saudi Arabia.

She is currently studying higher education in Shanghai, China. A month ago, she returned from training in Nepal. She participated in the competition from there. Bharatsinh Mahata under 58 kg and Ameer Blon under 63 kg also competed in the qualifying competition along with Palesha. Bharat won a match. He defeated Indonesia's M Kurnivan 19-6 and reached the semi-finals. There he was defeated by a player from Mongolia. Bharat, who got a chance in the repechage, again lost to the player from Afghanistan. Amir could not overcome his opponent from Chinese Taipei in the first game.