As all eyes in the world turn towards Paris for the Olympic Games 2024 starting today, we bring to you six Indian athletes with humble beginnings who are representing the country at the international event.
As the stage gets set for the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics 2024 along the River Seine on July 26, the Indian contingent is aiming to surpass their medal tally from the last edition of the international games that took place in Tokyo in 2020. A total of 117 Indian athletes will compete in 16 sports, with 72 athletes making their Olympic debut.
And while big hopes are pinned on previous medallists Neeraj Chopra, Mirabai Chanu, PV Sindhu, Lovlina Borgohain, and the men’s hockey team, the Indian team is full of many other inspiring sportspersons, who have braved various challenges to reach this level.
Meet six athletes who were bred in small towns and villages of India, and have made their way up from the grassroots, to the pinnacle of all sporting events.
Steeplechaser Avinash Sable took up running as a sport in 2015. Born in September 1994 in a village called Mandwa in Maharashtra’s Beed district, Sable grew up in a household of farmers. He would have to run six kilometres to school daily because there was no transport available.
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It was his ambition from childhood to join the Army and be the breadwinner of his family. After class 12, he was inducted into the Army, where he learned about running for sports. His talent came to the fore at cross-country running events. In 2017, Army coach Amrish Kumar suggested that Sable try out the steeplechase category. Kumar has attributed Sable’s success to his hardy, rural upbringing. In 2018, Sable suffered a broken ankle and faced a setback. He won the silver medal at the 2019 Asian Athletics Championships in Doha, making his debut on the international stage.
Even though he bettered his national record at the Tokyo Olympics heats in 2020, he narrowly missed making it to the finals during the summer games. We wish better luck for him at the Paris Olympics.
Lovlina Borgohain has won an Olympic bronze and gold medals at the Asian championships, making her a strong contender at the Paris Olympics this year. She was born in 1997 in a village called Baromukhia in Golaghat district of Assam.
Borgohain took up a form of kickboxing as a teen, following in her sisters’ footsteps. She became an amateur boxer after meeting boxing coach Padum Boro and began training in Guwahati at the age of 14.
Among her first international medals was a bronze win at the 2017 Asian Championships. Thereafter she competed in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia. At the 2020 Olympics, she was the only Indian boxer to return with a medal. The Asian Boxing Championships saw her clinch the gold medal. Now she looks set to get a position in the 75-kg boxing category at her second Olympic outing in Paris.
Men’s 20 km racewalk hopeful at the Paris Olympics, Ram Baboo has made his way up from complete anonymity and hardship to etch a name for himself in the annals of sporting glory.
Born in the remote village of Bhairava Gandhi in Bahuara Gram Panchayat of Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh, Baboo had to undertake all kinds of jobs to make ends meet for his family of six. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he even worked as a labourer along with his father under the MGNREGA scheme, earning Rs 300-500 a day.
Baboo had his heart set on athletics after watching the 2012 Olympics when India won two silver and four bronze medals. He would practise running on a 200-metre race track near his home. Help came when he met the Olympian Basant Bahadur Rana, who supported his kit, travel and diet expenses. Baboo is currently employed in the Army.
Having won a bronze medal at the 2023 Asian Games, all eyes are on Baboo for the 2024 Olympics, for which he clocked one hour and 20 minutes to meet the qualifying standard.
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A two-time World Champion boxer, Nikhat Zareen makes her Olympics debut at Paris this year. The Telangana-born boxer is a favourite in the 50-kg category. She also won a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games of 2022.
Zareen was born in Nizamabad in Telangana in 1996. She began training under her uncle, Shamsuddin, a boxing coach. In 2009 she was inducted into the Sports Authority of India’s training programme to train under IV Rao, a Dronacharya awardee.
She couldn’t make it to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics because she was nursing a dislocated shoulder injury from two years previous, but that did not stop her from dreaming big. The Indian women’s boxing team coach, Bhaskar Bhatt, is confident of Zareen’s chances of winning at the Paris Olympics this year.
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Parul Chaudhary became an athletics sensation at the 2023 Asian Games, where she won the 5,000-metre race clocking 15:14:75. Her father is a farmer, and the family lives at Iklauta village in Daurala block of Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh. She will take part in the 3,000-metre steeplechase and 5,000-metre long-distance running in Paris.
At school, Chaudhary used to take part in 800-metre races before she switched to the 1,500-metre and 3,000-metre events. Her sporting accomplishments enabled her to land a job in the Western Railway in 2015, after which she moved to Mumbai.
The 29-year-old will make her Olympics debut in Paris.
The ace javelin thrower was born in a family of farmers in Bahadarpur, Uttar Pradesh. She has to her credit the record of being the first Indian to take part in the women’s javelin throw finals at the 2019 World Athletics Championship held in Doha. She then qualified for the Tokyo Olympics based on her international ranking and is now representing India as a javelin thrower in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
She credits her brother for her success, since he was the one who noticed that Annu Rani could hurl the ball far during a cricket match. Being a long-distance runner, he supported Rani during her initial foray into the sport of javelin throw.
Rani is an eight-time national champion. She holds the Indian national record of 63.82 metres and looks poised to perform well at the Paris Olympics too.
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The lead image on top shows the Olympic Rings at Hotel de Ville to celebrate the Olympic Games in Paris this year. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
