Prachi Yadav Wiki, Height, Age, Husband, Family, Biography & More

Prachi Yadav is an Indian para canoe athlete who became the first Indian to participate in the para canoeing event at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. In 2022, she bagged a bronze medal at the Paracanoe World Cup in Poland.

Wiki/Biography

Prachi Yadav was born on Monday, 29 May 1995 (age 28 years; as of 2023) in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. Her zodiac sign is Gemini. In 2013, she completed her schooling at Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir, Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh. In 2016, she attained a B. Com degree from K.R.G College, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. In 2018, she moved to Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

Physical Appearance

Height (approx.): 5′ 6″

Weight (approx.): 60 kg

Hair Colour: Black

Eye Colour: Black

Family

Parents & Siblings

Prachi Yadav’s father, Jagdish Singh Yadav, is a retired Deputy Director in the Agriculture Department. Her mother, Chandra Kumari Yadav, died after a long battle with Cancer in 2003. She has a younger brother and an elder sister named Roshni.

Husband 

On 11 June 2020, she got married to Manish Kaurav, a Para Canoeist. Manish’s family initially did not accept the marriage but eventually accepted it after a year.

Career

National Championships

In 2018, Prachi started training in Para Canoeing professionally. In 2019, she participated in the 29th National Canoe Sprint & Paracanoe Championships held in Delhi and bagged two medals, silver in the VL2 Women category, and gold in the KL2 Women category. In 2020, she stood as the runner-up at the National Paracanoe Competition & Paracanoe Classification held in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh in both, KL2 Women, and VL2 Women categories. In 2021, she bagged a gold medal in both the KL2 Women and VL2 Women categories at the 14th National Paracanoe Championships held in Bhopal, India. In 2022, she bagged a silver medal at the 15th National Paracanoe Championships and Paracanoe Classification in the KL2 Women category and a gold medal in the VL2 Women category. In the same year, she bagged a gold medal in both the KL2 Women and VL2 Women categories at the 16th National Paracanoe Championships held in Bhopal, India.

International Championships

In 2019, Prachi finished at the eighth position in the 2019 ICF World Championships held in Germany. In May 2022, Prachi bagged a gold medal at the Asian Canoe Para Qualifiers for the Asian Para Games held in Rayong, Thailand, in the VL2 Women category, in which she covered a distance of 200 metres in 01:07.200. In the same year, she bagged a bronze medal at the ICF Canoe Sprint & Paracanoe World Cup in the VL2 Women category held in Poznan, Poland, in which she covered a distance of 200 metres in 01:04.71.

In 2023, she bagged a gold medal in both the KL2 Women and VL2 Women categories in which she covered a distance of 500 metres in 02:38.441 and 02:55.482 time respectively at the 3rd Asian Paracanoe Championship held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. She then won a silver medal in the KL2 Women category 200 metres event at the 3rd Asian Paracanoe Championship which she completed in 01:00.725 duration, and a gold medal in the VL2 Women category 200 metres event which she completed in 01:11.259 duration. In October 2023, she represented India at the 4th Asian Para Games held in Hangzhou, China, where she bagged a silver medal in the VL2 Women category and a gold medal in the KL2 Women category.

First GOLD of Day 2 at #AsianParaGames! 🥇🇮🇳

Our #TOPScheme athlete @ItzPrachi_ strikes Gold for India in Para Canoe, Women's KL2, with an impressive clocking of 54.962.
This marks her second medal at the #AsianParaGames2022 🏆🚣🏻‍♀️

Congratulations Prachi on this remarkable… pic.twitter.com/i2ZIKRq2Pn

— SAI Media (@Media_SAI) October 24, 2023

Awards & Honours

• On 29 August 2020, which is celebrated as National Sports Day, she received the Vikram Award from the Government of Madhya Pradesh for her performance in para canoeing at various national and international competitions.

• On 9 January 2024, she received the Arjuna Award from the Indian President Droupadi Murmu for her outstanding performance in para canoeing.
  

  Prachi Yadav while receiving the Arjuna Award from Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi

Facts/Trivia

• Prachi Yadav was a national-level para-swimmer before she shifted to para-canoeing in 2018 on the advice of her swimming coach Virender Kumar Dabas.
  

  Prachi’s Instagram post about Para-swimming Championships 2022

  She has a disability below her waist, which restricts her lower body movements. In an interview, while talking about the switch in her career, she said,

  Virender Kumar Dabas sir from LNIPE, Gwalior asked me to switch to paracanoe as I got long arms. The decision worked.”

• Prachi practices para-canoeing at the Lower Lake in Bhopal, India, and is trained under the guidance of Capt. Pijush Kanti Baroi and Mayank Singh Thakur.
  

  Prachi with her coach Mayank Thakur

• The boat that Prachi used in the initial stage of her training was designed by Mayank Thakur, chairperson of the India Para Kayaking and Canoeing Association, and it was the first boat specially designed for an Indian para-canoeing athlete.

• In 2020, she became the first-ever Indian Paracanoe athlete to qualify for the Summer Paralympics, held in Tokyo, Japan.

• Prachi Yadav is one of the many athletes under the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). ^[1]PIB

• In an interview, while talking about her struggles as a para-athlete, she said,
  

  When I began in sports, my relatives would say what can she do? She can’t do anything. She can’t even ride a cycle, she can’t walk. When my father first went to get me admitted to a school, they refused to accept me saying, how will your daughter handle being here? Who will support here?”

  She added that her father supported and motivated her throughout her journey.

• She regularly exercises at the gym and often posts about it on her Instagram account. ^[2]Instagram – Prachi Yadav