The Paralympics wrap up on Sunday. NPR’s Rachel Martin speaks with blind athlete Dartanyon Crockett who won a bronze medal in Rio in Judo.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The Paralympics wrap up today. We’ve been following one young athlete. His name is Dartanyon Crockett. He’s a blind wrestler who switched sports to judo for the Paralympics. We interviewed him before he went to Rio. Dartanyon is now back in the States with a bronze medal around his neck. He won his first bronze in the 2012 London Games. We caught up with him via Skype.

DARTANYON CROCKETT: Being a two-time medalist – one, being a medalist is incredible in itself, but being able to do it twice back-to-back is amazing.

MARTIN: Dartanyon said this medal is even more meaningful than his first because of who he had to beat to win it.

CROCKETT: It was against an opponent – his name’s Sam Ingram from Great Britain. He’s actually the one who beat me in London. He’s been beating me for, like, this entire four years. Every other time I went against him, I lost to him. And then finally to be able to pull out a win where it really counted was just pretty incredible.

MARTIN: Before he even won the match, Dartanyon had decided that he will compete again in four years.

CROCKETT: Because of my excitement and my love of the sport, I made a decision the day before I competed – decided that I’m definitely going to go for another four years.

MARTIN: Even before you won this most recent bronze, you knew that you were going to go for it in Tokyo again.

CROCKETT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Dartanyon Crockett – he won a bronze medal in judo at the Rio Paralympics. Some sad news from the games today to add – Paralympian Bahman Golbarnezhad of Iran died while competing in a cycling road race. Following a crash on the course, Golbarnezhad suffered cardiac arrest while being rushed to the hospital. He’ll be honored with a moment of silence at tonight’s closing ceremony. He was 48 years old.

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