BALWAN SINGH may have been stricken with polio, but that hasn't stopped the die-hard athlete from achieving his goals, no matter what the odds are.
Coming from Tikri-Kalan village on the Delhi-Haryana border, the athlete whose left leg is polio-stricken, has gone on to win gold in the 100 and 400m events at the British Para-athletic Championship held at Manchester earlier this month.
It's indeed a tribute to human spirit that a sportsperson laid low by such a debilitating disease goes on to win medals, and that too in a field boasting of athletes from 20 countries.
Last year too in May, Balwan (his name literally means ‘strongest of them all’), won gold in 200m and silver in 100m at the Belgium Paralympic Championship. But all these medals haven't come easy. A 40km journey from his village brings him to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium where he comes for practice without fail.
The same route, then, brings him back home just in time to catch up on his folks before retiring to bed. The journey and grind apart, Balwan has also seen the uncaring side of the bureaucracy and has come out a lot wiser. “Prior to the British championship, I approached the Delhi Government's Education and Sports Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely who promised me financial help.
“But that didn't come and I had to finally knock at the door of a former Delhi CM who gave me some assistance,” he says.
{{/usCountry}}“But that didn't come and I had to finally knock at the door of a former Delhi CM who gave me some assistance,” he says.
{{/usCountry}}It's an irony that while Balwan has been selected for the Paralympic Asian Games at Doha in 2006, the holder of an engineering diploma from Pusa Institute doesn't know whether he will be able to participate in the same.