A total of 15 emerging and elite para-athletes were selected to receive support from IndusInd Umang in association with GoSports Foundation.
Paralympic athletes Deepa Malik (extreme left), Niranjan Mukundan, Devendra Jhajharia, Suyash Jadhav and Amit Saroha at a media conference in a city hotel yesterday
Rewarding the deserving was the name of the game at a Mumbai five-star hotel yesterday where facilities were extended to para-athletes to make a name for themselves.
Paralympic athletes Deepa Malik (extreme left), Niranjan Mukundan, Devendra Jhajharia, Suyash Jadhav and Amit Saroha at a media conference in a city hotel yesterday. Pic/Suresh Karkera
ADVERTISEMENT
A total of 15 emerging and elite para-athletes were selected to receive support from IndusInd Umang in association with GoSports Foundation.
Of the 15 para-athletes, two of them — Amit Kumar Saroha (club thrower) and Devendra Jhajharia (javelin) have already qualified for the Rio Paralympic Games to be held from September 7 to 18 while three para-athletes who were present at the event — Deepa Malik (shot put), Niranjan Mukundan (swimmer) and Suyash Jadhav (swimmer) – are training in the hope to qualify for the quadrennial event.
Despite losing his left hand at the age of eight when he touched a live electric cable of 11000 volts while climbing a tree in Rajasthan, Jhajharia took to sports in order to prove that he was not a no-hoper.
Jhajharia won the javelin gold at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens to become only the second gold medallist for the country at the Paralympics after para swimmer Murlikant Petkar (1972).
He hopes to repeat this feat in the Rio Paralympic Games.
“When I won gold in 2004, I did it without much financial help. Now, with help from Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) and this initiative, I am confident of repeating my Athens performance in Rio. I want to kiss the gold medal again and see the tri-colour being hoisted on Rio soil,"the 35-year-old, who works as a coach at Sports Authority of India in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), told mid-day yesterday.
Mom’s the word
Talking about how his mother Jeevnidevi helped him overcome the disability, Jahjharia said, “People in my native place (Churu district in Rajasthan) used to taunt my parents and said ‘ab yeh ladka kya karega?’ (What will this boy do now?).
“It was my mother who stood by me and I owe it to her,"said Jhajharia who became the first paralympian to be honoured with the Padma Shri award in 2012.
Arjuna Awardee Saroha suffered a car accident at the age of 22. He became a quadriplegic (paralysis caused by illness or injury that results in partial or total loss of use of all four limbs and torso due to compression of the spinal cord).
Before his injury, the TOP scheme-supported athlete was a national level hockey player. Saroha, whose silver in men’s club throw F51 event (athletes having activity limitations in both lower and upper limbs) in the IPC Athletics World Championships in Doha last year helped seal a berth for Rio.
However, Saroha stressed that differently-abled athletes need to stop looking for sympathy.
“If we want the mindset of people to change from calling us differently-abled instead of disabled, we ourselves need to stop asking for sympathy."
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
