With proper backing, para athletes soar on wings of change
New Delhi:
When Devendra Jhajharia made his Paralympic debut in 2004, he had to gather the money required to travel and compete at the Athens Games on his own. He had no access to a stadium, or a proper coach. There was no concept of a national camp.
“How I managed to compete, only I know,” said Jhajharia.
Not just compete—the javelin thrower claimed the gold with a world record throw—a legacy that he, now 40, is continuing to build on, with a silver at Tokyo to add to his two previous gold medals (2004 and Rio 2016).
But, back then, it was for India at the Paralympics as it was for India at the Olympics—few medals and tales of neglect and apathy. Jhajharia’s gold was India’s first Paralympics medal in 20 years, and only the second gold since 1972.
How is it then that India has already won 10 medals—including two gold—with more expected in the coming days at the Tokyo Paralympics, when we have won a grand total of just 12 medals between the 1968 and 2016 Paralympics?
The answer is simple—attention and money.
Jhajharia headed to Tokyo backed by proper funding from the Union sports ministry’s Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), which took care of his training, participation in international competitions, as well as an allowance. He trained at the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) Gandhinagar centre instead of “any ground”, and had a strength and conditioning expert provided by Olympic Gold Quest.
A transformative change has happened at every level in para sport in India, and the results are starting to show.
“The focus has become athlete-centric,” said Paralympic Committee of India (PCI) president Deepa Malik from Tokyo.
Malik is a silver-medallist in shot put from the Rio Games.
“I was very clear that come what may, I will not compromise with anything around the athletes, whether they need right prosthetics, wheelchairs or any equipment,” Malik said. “I have had very good coordination with SAI and TOPS, and whenever I have presented our requirements at the Mission Olympic Cell meetings, they have been very understanding.”
Malik, like Jhajharia, has firsthand experience of the struggles that para athletes in India have faced earlier. “When Jhajharia and I were training, we were simultaneously athletes and activists,” said Malik.
The first major change for para athletes came in 2015, when TOPS brought them into its ambit. In the 2016-2020 Olympic cycle, close to ₹38 crore of funding for para athletes has come from TOPS, and the sports ministry’s annual grants alone.
“As per the international calendar we have not missed even a single competition in this cycle,” said PCI secretary general Gursharan Singh.
“Even proposals that were partially cleared by the government, PCI has arranged funds from sponsors, donations and other contributions. We have arranged ₹5-6 crore each year in this cycle. Still, it’s not enough. We are not even competing in wheelchair races because we can’t fund them.”
Bhavina Patel, the 34-year-old wheelchair-bound table tennis player who won a silver to kickstart India’s medal count at the Tokyo Paralympics, exemplifies the changes.
Despite already being a top prospect with a clutch of international medals, Patel did not make it to the Rio Paralympics in 2016 for reasons that were never made clear to her or to anyone else by the PCI, prompting her to protest and appeal for help on Twitter. This time around, she not only made the cut, but was given funds for a custom wheelchair, an international standard table and a world-class robot—the Butterfly Amicus Prime—for training.
“Things are at par with the elite ablebodied athletes in terms of access to facilities. The treatment is now equal,” said India’s para athletics coach Satyanarayana, who trains Thangavelu Mariyappan, who won a silver in Tokyo in high jump and gold at Rio. Another major change has been in the Paralympics federation, PCI, itself. Since it was established in 1992, it was mired in controversy, and was even suspended four times.
Private bodies, too, have come in with support—the Gosports Foundation runs a Para Champions Programme that currently supports 44 athletes, including Avani Lekhara, who became the first Indian woman to win a gold at the Paralympics (10m air rifle), Sumit Antil, who broke the world record three times en route to a gold in javelin, and high jump bronze medallist Sharad Kumar.
OGQ, which has been working with India’s top Olympics athletes for over a decade, started adding para athletes to its roster since 2019 and now supports 37 of them, of whom 24 are in Tokyo. “It’s about chipping in with the one percenters, the little things that make a difference,” said Viren Rasquinha, OGQ’S director and CEO. “In aspects like strength and conditioning and physiotherapy, if we give them a good sports science team working behind the scenes, it helps para athletes quite a bit.”
There’s a lot of work still to be done pointed out Malik. Jhajharia said that the success at Tokyo is only the beginning since the changing status of para athletes in India is a recent phenomenon.