Odisha girl overcame mother’s death by choosing to train on the way to double medal show at Asian Youth Athletics
Covid has taken away loved ones from millions of people.
And Sabita Toppo is one among them who lost her mother during the initial days of the pandemic and with it, life turned upside down for the young Odisha athlete. But rather than breaking down, she stayed strong, trained hard and kept her focus on becoming a champion athlete.
Naturally Sabita, whose father is a farmer and labourer, couldn’t be happier when she qualified for the 4th Asian Youth Athletics Championships that was held in Kuwait last month after having won the gold at the National Youth (U18) Athletics meet in Bhopal in September.
It was the big break that she had been hoping to get for a long time after having won multiple titles in age-group meets at national as well as state level. Once she got it, Sabita had her eyes fixed on the prize and continued her preparation for the big event at the national camp.
It was all going well for the girl from Sundergarh district — the youngest of six siblings — but things suddenly turned topsy-turvy as her visa got delayed by a couple of days.
Even as the other athletes travelled out, Sabita, who trains at the Odisha Reliance Foundation High Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar under Rohit Mane, remained behind waiting for the visa to arrive. It finally did come just a day ahead of her event and she travelled overnight and reached Kuwait.
To her good fortune, lady luck smiled on her after arrived at the meet.
“Her first round was scheduled for that day (October 13) only but some of the athletes were absent, so she qualified for the finals directly which was scheduled to take place a day later (October 14). This helped her a lot since she got a day to rest and prepare,” said Rohit during an interaction.
The championship turned out to be almost perfect for her. First, she won silver at the 100m hurdles in 14.17 seconds and then bagged the gold in the girls’ medley relay.
While the taste of victory was sweet, it has been a long journey for her. It began at Gaibira School in Sabdega where she used to take part in athletics meets regularly. Then she trained under Sushmita Dutta at Sundergadh Sports Hostel for a couple of years and thereafter got selected at HPC in June 2019 where she has been training ever since.
Throughout this journey, challenges have been there, but she hasn’t let it affect her. “It hasn’t been challenging at all. The coaches have been guiding me all along, so it never felt difficult,” she said during a telephonic interaction.
This headstrong attitude of hers has really impressed coach Rohit, who completed his coaching degree in Australia and joined HPC in 2019 as one of its first coaches.
“She is a very confident girl. If you give her a target, she will do it anyhow. At the National Youth Athletics meet she ran the heat of 100m hurdles in 14.51 seconds. But the qualification mark for the Asian meet was 14.4 so I asked her to run faster and in the final, she just ran 14.15,” said the coach.
Despite her success in the 100m hurdles, Rohit doesn’t want to restrict her to this event only. “I have been giving her multi-event kind of training so that she has fundamental development. She does long jump, high jump and she is also a good sprinter,” said the coach.
Explaining the reason behind it, he further said, “If from a young age, an athlete is restricted to a single event, there is chance of injuries. Also, athletes get bored of doing the same things over and over again at times.”
If Sabita keeps finishing on the podium regularly, she won’t get bored at all. And if she can remain the ‘fighter and competitive’ as she is now, one can indeed expect even greater things from her in the coming days. It’s like what her coach said, “Everybody trains well but it’s the hunger to succeed that sets the athletes apart.”
