Excerpts from a new book on Indian boxer Vijender Singh

Even Vijender whose stoic and strict policy it is to say nothing if he has nothing good to say says that he had never been given any specific training or strategy for his many international boutsVijender Singh in a bout against Sonny Whiting of Great Britain during their International Middleweight contest at Manchester Arena on October 10 2015 in England In 2013 Singh was in the thick of a controversy when the police claimed that his car was spotted outside a drug smugglers home PicGetty ImagesI thought about it myself made my own plans he says If theres one thing that the Bhiwani boys and the Bhiwani coach Jagdish agree on it is on the sorry state of affairs at the elite national training campWhen I joined the national camp I knew nothing about training methods or nutrition Akhil says I was like anyone else only halfliterate from a rural background a poor family So for example even as late as 2007 all of us used to drink a litre of coke each every day training Or exercises No one taught us how to do any exercises except the most basic ones we learnt back in our schooldaysOne of the things that appeals most to Vijender about turning pro is that he is his own man and he can blame no one about the shape and direction of his career Things are so much simpler Pay your coach get trained properly go fight get your money go home he says Theres no running around trying to get permission from here clearance from there trying to flatter the right people trying to know the right people begging for the money that is supposed to be yours in the first place Beg beg always beg for everythingYou ask me what is wrong with the system It is difficult to say because there is nothing really systematic about the way sports is run in India In 2013 Vijender already frustrated by the hopeless ban on the Indian boxing federation faced yet another challenge This one threatened to derail not just his career but the life he had built for himselfIn March Vijender had travelled to Mumbai for some promotional work He had been dropped at the airport in his car by three friends including the boxer Dinesh and another boxer from Punjab called Ram Singh After dropping him the plan was that Dinesh and Ram Singh would drive back to Patiala Vijender spent two days in Mumbai and came back to his house in Gurgaon The next morning he saw on TV the police were claiming that they had found his car outside the house of a wellknown drug smuggler in Punjab who had been arrested They had also arrested Ram Singh who had confessed to being a part of the trade and had told the police that Vijender knew the arrested smuggler wellThe Punjab police who were in charge of the operation told reporters that Vijender and Ram Singh had consumed heroin twelve times Twelve times Vijender laughs I wonder who was keeping count of this Were the police sitting with me and going 1 2 3hellip12 Dinesh says that the whole thing was a conspiracy a way to get some attention to the case by involving a famous nameThe car was not even in Zirakpur where the police said they found it Dinesh says I remember it very very well I was with Ram Singh in Patiala when someone called him and said Bring this car to this spot and he asked me to come along When they reached the spot a few kilometres from the SAI training centre in Patiala they were met by two policemen They asked me to get off the car and then they drove away with Ram Singh Dinesh saysVijenders brother Manoj says that the car had a GPS and when the police made their statement against Vijender the first thing he did was to ask for the GPS records But by then Manoj says those records had been erased and the GPS had been removed from the car The police demanded that Vijender undergo a dope test He refused saying that he will agree to it if the National Antidoping Agency mdash NADA the apex body for doping control for sportspeople in India mdash are put in charge of it The NADA test was cleanManoj took over the responsibility for handling the situation mdash he liaised with lawyers fought with the investigating officer canvassed for support He told Vijender to stay put in his home in Gurgaon For one month I did nothing but stay at home Vijender says I didnt speak to journalists I felt no need to give them any proof of innocence If I were guilty it would come out If I wasnt it would come out Now that I think of it I had a great time at home I ate well slept a lot watched movies In the end the police filed no case against him brought no chargesBut I became so much tougher after that Vijender says And it really really struck me hard that my boxing was going nowhere I needed to change something I needed to be ruthless He needed to get out of this comfortable limbo where he was a celebrity surrounded by friends and family with always someone in his entourage ready to help out with whatever he neededHe saw his old boxing mates move away too One by one ground down by the poor training at the national camp that snuffed out their chances of winning international medals and then the longrunning administrative mess that made it next to impossible for them to compete the boys from Bhiwani quit boxingAll except VijenderExtracted with permission from Ringside With Vijender by Rudraneil Sengupta exclusively available on the Juggernaut Books app