Relay star Rajesh Ramesh vomited for an hour after being stretchered off with cramps | Sport-others News

After their horic sub-3 minute race in the heats of the World Championships, the relay team members Muhammed Anas, Amoj Jacob and Muhammed Ajmal Variyathodi suddenly noticed their anchor leg star missing. Rajesh Ramesh, who ran the race of his life, snapping at the heels of American Justin Robinson to help India break the Asian record, wasn’t anywhere to be seen on the team bus they had boarded at Budapest.“We didn’t even realise for a while that Ramesh hadn’t joined us. But when we realised, we rushed back to look for Ramesh. He was being carried off on a stretcher. We asked him if he was okay. He just kept saying lactic, lactic (build-up of acid in the muscles during intense exercise),” recalls Amoj.Although it isn’t uncommon for professional runners to feel uneasy and cramp up after a high-intensity run the final burst had really taken a toll on the 24-year-old. “I vomited for the next one hour. My cramps had hit me so badly that I needed to be taken off on a stretcher. I haven’t felt anything like this before. It took me two hours to feel okay,” says Ramesh.

Apart from Neeraj’s gold, the relay team’s back-to-back sub-three-minute races in the heats and finals were one of the highlights of the Budapest Worlds. The relay team had gone into the competition with virtually no expectations. “Honestly nobody had any hopes on us. People thought we were here just to participate but we have proved them wrong,” says Ramesh.
Even the opponents were impressed the Indians’ run. “After the race, Netherlands, the Jamaicans came to congratulate us. They told us this is how you run a race,” says Ramesh.
It’s a redemption of sorts for the relay team, feels chief deputy coach Raj Mohan MK who faced harsh criticism after the team’s dismal show in the last edition of the World Championships where the team clocked 3:07.29s to finish 12th in the heats. Apart from Nagthan Pandi who was in for injured Amoj, the rest of the team from the 2019 Eugene Worlds has remained unchanged.
“Nalla kazhvi uthananga (People gave us an earful) especially on social media. While returning from Eugene we were trying to hide our faces at the airport. Random people, whom we had never met before, started giving us running tips. From there to here, it’s been quite a journey,” says Ramesh.

For coach Raj Mohan too, Budapest has come as a balm. Mohan has been part of the national camp since 2015 and has seen the boys go through some really rough patches. “We have been working really hard for this. Nobody believed that Indians could go below 3 minutes and we did it twice. In the finals we were actually going for the medal,” says Mohan.
In the now-famous heats, Muhammed Anas started with the fastest first lap split of 45.27 seconds, before Jacob ran 44.68 for the second. India’s third lap from Muhammed Ajmal would be a scorching 44.17, the fastest amongst all runners in that heat, as he gave the American Chropher Bailey a run for his money. Then on the anchor, Rajesh Ramesh’s 44.93 seriously troubled Robinson.
Rajesh Ramesh, of India, center, celebrates after anchoring his team to place second in a Men’s 4×400-meters relay heat during the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2023. AP/PTI(AP08_27_2023_000010A)
“Since 2016, we were expected to run 2:59 but it never happened. It happened today,” Anas had told reporters after the heats. They would continue in the same vein in the final. Anas’ brother is the talented long jumper Muhammed Anees who finished fifth at the Commonwealth Games at Birmingham. Ajmal, a 100m convert to the one-lapper, also from Palakkad, brought his sprinting chops to the third lap of an eye-popping 44.17 seconds.
Emotions were high in the team room after Saturday’s race as long sweaty hugs were exchanged before foreign coach Jason Dawson gave the boys a nice pep talk. “He said we will do well at the Asian Games. I think he almost forgot there was a final to run. Raj Mohan sir was weeping. It was a surreal feeling,” said Amoj.
Still a final to run
But Amoj and co knew this wasn’t the time to savour their feat as they had the all-important final a day later. Unlike the rest of their opponents, they did not have the luxury of adding fresh legs for the finals – the Americans swapped two runners. “We were all dead. Back in the hotel room, all we did was hydrate ourselves. We tried sleeping but it was so hard with the adrenaline rush,” says Amoj.Most Read
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The phones were kept on silent, after taking a quick peep at the Instagram notifications though. “I have never seen my phone buzz so often. After seeing a few posts we decided to put our phones aside as the messages just kept coming in. A lot of celebrities congratulated us but we did not have the time to even respond. We had no clue that our race video had gone so viral. At that time our mind was on the finals alone,” says Rajesh who almost quit athletics in 2020 to work full-time as a ticket collector with the Indian Railways.

Rajesh Ramesh worked as a ticket checker at Trichy, Tamil Nadu railway station for almost a year in 2018. Today he ran the anchor leg for India’s 4×400 team which qualified for the World C’ships final with a new Asian record – 2.59.05s @IExpressSportshttps://t.co/ferxO4OMt5 pic.twitter.com/cL9lMBGDr2
— Andrew (@AndrewAmsan) August 26, 2023
Rajesh was in charge of fining ticketless travellers at the Trichy platform, a duty he admits he wasn’t proficient in. He still remembers how seniors would chide him for not issuing enough challans. “I would let people go off with a warning. At that point, I would have never imagined that I would run in the World Championships one day. While I worked as TC my only desire was to return to athletics. Had I not done that, I’d be still working as TC in Trichy,” says Ramesh.

Amoj, who hasn’t gone a single season without injuries since 2018, was part of the Tokyo Olympics team that had created a new Asian record which was snatched away the Japanese in a year. Amoj has had enough experience as a professional athlete to not let the sudden attention go to his head. “Today everyone is praising us and then one bad day, the same people will criticise us. It is important to just ignore all the attention we are getting and get back to work. All these things don’t matter,” says Amoj.
With less than a month before the Hangzhou Asian Games, the Indian team knows they are favourites for gold (Qatar took first spot with 3:00.56s last time). But this is a new team and just Asian-level medals won’t quench their thirst. “We have broken the 3-minute mental barrier now and the journey has just begun. We have proved that Indians are no longer just participants but contenders at the big stage,” says Amoj who promises even more solid timings in the Olympics in Paris next year. “Aaap dekhna bas. You just wait and watch!”