Harvinder hits bullseye on the day Praveen soars high
MUMBAI: Last year during the nationwide lockdown, Praveen Kumar dug up a pit, filled it with a layer of loose sand and began practising his jumps in his family’s small farm in Jewar, Noida. Some 250 kilometres away in Ajitnagar village in Kaithal, Haryana, Harvinder Singh converted a part of his family’s multi-acre farm into an archery setup.
It was the pandemic effect— with all sporting facilities shut, the two athletes needed to improvise, using their creativity and grit, if they wanted to continue to prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.
On a rainy Friday in Tokyo, both of them stood on the podium—kumar, 18, as India’s youngest medal winner at these Paralympics and Singh, 30, as India’s first-ever archer to win a medal at any Paralympics. Kumar won silver in the high jump T64/T44 (athletes with lower limb impairment) combined category after a jump of 2.07m that set a new Asian record, while Singh clinched bronze in the men’s individual recurve open category after beating Korea’s Kim Min Su 6-5 in a shootoff in the bronze medal match.
Kumar cleared 2.07m in his second attempt on a wet Olympic Stadium. Britain’s Jonathan Broom-edwards won gold by touching the 2.10m mark, which Kumar went for but failed in all his three attempts.
It has been a meteoric rise for Kumar who began pursuing the sport only three years ago.
Kumar was born with an impairment that affects the bones connecting the hip and his left leg. He played a bit of volleyball in school before moving to high jump. During an inter-district competition, a coach asked him to meet para athletics coach Satyapal Singh, who tested the young boy and began training him at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi from 2018.
Kumar is just 5ft4, yet the coach saw something in him. “His right leg is incredibly explosive. That made me believe that despite his height,
he can do well in high jump,” Satyapal said.
Next year, besides winning silver in the junior event, Kumar finished fourth in the T64 high jump at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships. A Tokyo berth secured, and the boy’s career was off to a fast start.
The pandemic last year threatened to slow it down. But Satyapal and Kumar decided to make use of one tiny corner of his father’s field. “We dug a section of it and refilled it with loose sand so that he could at least practice his jumps on it daily and perform his fitness drills there,” Satyapal, who watched Kumar’s jumps through video calls sitting in Delhi, said.
This process went on for three months last year and two months this year amid the second wave, which also saw Kumar infected with Covid-19 and bedridden in April. “All his muscle strength had gone. Only we know how we got him back into shape,” the coach said.
“I didn’t believe that I would be able to reach this stage one day,” Kumar said in a press conference. “After I cleared 2.01m in my first attempt, my confidence increased. I knew I would be in the top three, so the pressure was off. I knew that if I gave my best now, even rain couldn’t stop me from winning a medal,” he said.
Rain couldn’t stop Harvinder either later in the day. After losing the semi-final 6-4 to American Kevin Mather, the Indian showed tremendous composure
in the bronze medal match against the Korean. Leading 4-2, Harvinder could have wrapped it up in the fourth set when he needed to shoot an 8 to win. He shot 7, splitting the two points between them. Min Su eked out the fifth set to force a shootoff, where Harvinder struck a perfect 10 to the Korean’s 8.
It was his third shootoff win out of the five matches on the day. Stuck in his village at the start of the lockdown in March last year, Harvinder made his father’s farm a training base after transporting the entire equipment, including the target and arrows, from his university in Patiala.
“In those days, our field was also empty, so my brother and father rolled the tractor over a section of it and I set up my target there and would practice twice a day. Even during the second wave this year, I did the same thing. I would practice alone, while two kids from my village would come and watch me. They gave me good company,” Harvinder said with a smile.
A botched treatment when he had dengue while only 18 months old caused his leg impairment. Pursuing his Phd in economics in Patiala’s Punjabi University, Harvinder tasted little success in major international tournaments until the 2018 Asian Para Games, where he became the first para archer from India to win gold in a major competition. Add the first para archer from India to win a medal at the Paralympics to that.