After setting new mark, Sadanand Rajwar eyes new spikes

IMMEDIATELY AFTER he broke the youth national record in the 100 metres at the Khelo India Youth Games, Sadanand Rajwar pulled off his running spikes from his feet and threw them in the air. The spontaneous celebration was also Rajwar’s way of saying farewell to the well-used spikes. The 17-year-old from Chandol village in Hazaribagh drict of Jharkhand had made plans to buy a new pair from the Sector 17 Plaza in Chandigarh. He hopes the prize money for clocking 10.63 seconds will cover the cost.
“My coaches have been generous enough to give me international-standard sprint shoes. I always dreamt about owning my own pair. It costs about Rs 25,000. To create a new youth national record is a special feeling. I hope to improve further. The new shoes will definitely help,” Rajwar said.
His journey to a gold medal in the Khelo India Youth Games has been a tough one. He is the first athlete from his family and if not for the loan his grandfather took Rajwar would not have made it so far. “Nobody in our family knows anything about running. Our family is into farming and we own a small piece of land. We are dependent on my grandfather’s (retired teacher) pension and income from the farm,” Rajwar, who lost his father when he was a toddler, said.
On the insence of his grandfather, Rajwar was enrolled in St Stephen’s School in Hazaribagh at the age of ten. He first started running on the mud track in school and was guided coach Priyaranjan. “Apart from coach Priyaranjan sir, our teacher Kalpana Bara made sure that I was given ‘extra diet’ so that there was no burden on my family. My grandfather had already taken small loans to send me to the hostel,” Rajwar said.Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
A gold in the Under-14 category in a state meet and a first place finish at the junior nationals in 2017 helped him get selected for the Jharkhand Sports Promotion Society Academy at Ranchi where he trained under coach Sanjay Ghosh. .”It was only when I got selected for the Ranchi academy that my family had to worry less about the expenditure,” he said.
Sadanand K from Jharkhand during Khelo India Youth Games at Tau Devi Lal Stadium. (Express photo Jaipal Singh)
Recently, Rajwar has made steady progress on the track. At the just concluded Under-20 Federation Cup, he won a bronze with a timing of 10.78 seconds. Last year, Rajwar was the final in the men’s 100m at the Inter-state athletics championship (10.79). An explosive start is what gives him an advantage, coach Ghosh said.

“When Sadanand had come to us at the academy in Ranchi, his sprint in the 30 metres was very good. We spent time working on his running action, leaning position initially before working on his strength, which is the explosive start, which I believe will only improve as he gains more strength in coming years. He can beat Gurindervir Singh’s junior national record of 10.47 seconds in the coming months and can improve further,” Ghosh said.
Sudeshna wins gold
Meanwhile, Sudeshna Shivankar of Maharashtra became the fastest woman athlete of the games clocking 11.79 seconds in the girls’ 100 metres. The youngster, whose feat was watched father Hanumant Shivankar, a head constable in the Maharashtra Police, too had started practicing on a mud track in Satara. “Sudeshna always wanted to run sprints. When we got her enrolled at the Chhatrapati Shahu Stadium in Satara, we were a bit worried about her racing on the mud track and getting injured. But coach Balwant Babar sir told us not to worry. Wherever she travels, she asks me to accompany her and seeing her win medals is our reward,” Shivankar said.