Nashik’s long run

It was here in Nashik that Kavita Raut began her training. The girl from Savarpada,a hamlet 85 km down State Highway 26,started running over hillocks on her way to school and graduated to running in packed stadiums. Anjana Thamke,another rising star,began running over two hills on her way to school. Thamke,who hails from Ganeshgaon,40 km from Nashik,already has two junior national records and has won three gold medals at a recent national-level meet in Pune. There are other athletes in the group who have shown similar promise. Most come from poor tribal families in the hills near the Gujarat border.

Just like Kenya,famous for producing long-distance runners of repute,Nashik too is fast becoming a nursery for Indian athletics. The hilly terrain,clean air and lack of roads make Nashik district ideal for practising athletes. Like many Kenyan long-distance athletes,Raut and her friends too began by running to and from school. Most athletes here come from farming families and running for them is a way out of deprivation.

The starting block

The man on the bicycle,49-year-old Vijendra Singh from Muzzafarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh,started it all. A Sports Authority of India (SAI) athletics coach,Vijendra was posted at Nashik in 1992. Nearly a decade after he first started training athletes on the dusty Bhonsala Military School ground,he stumbled on his biggest find.

Singh remembers a sultry March evening 10 years ago when a stranger sought him out. She was a teacher from Harsul village,40 km from Nashik. A girl from her school was winning all the races in inter-school competitions in the district. Would Singh take a look at her? He did,and immediately agreed to coach her for an upcoming state event.

“Kavita Raut won three gold medals in her first meet,” he says. “It was her first state-level meet and she returned with a bunch of medals hanging round her neck,” says Singh,remembering that tournament held at Pravra in 2002.

Neither Singh nor Raut remembers the name of the schoolteacher who brought them together.

Those three gold medals were just the beginning. At the 2003 nationals at Shimoga,Raut announced her arrival by bagging three medals (two silver,one gold),and since then,she has had a stranglehold over long-distance running in India. In 2010,she won the 10,000-metre bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and followed it up with the 5,000-metre bronze and the 10,000-metre silver at the Asian Games in Guangzhou,China.

In Nashik district,Raut is a star. Earlier this month,on her way home to her village Savarpada,she stopped by at her school—the Government primary school at Harsul. It took just 10 minutes for the school yard to fill with children,all jostling to shake her hand and ask her how she felt running in a packed Jawaharlal Nehru stadium. Girls queued up to take autographs and children from the nearby villages clambered over boulders to catch a glimpse of the ‘Savarpada Express’.

“Four years ago,people outside my village didn’t know me. The Commonwealth Games changed all that. There were screens put up all over the district and they beamed my race live. Now I have to almost run away from felicitation functions,” she says.

Savarpada did not have a road till 2010. It was only after Raut’s performance at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi that the village got a proper road. Since then,however,no one has bothered to check on the condition of the road which is full of huge potholes. Raut,who now works with ONGC and shuttles between Nashik and Dehra Dun,owns a car but says driving to the village is quite a task. “When I bought my car,I drove down to my village but the ride was so bumpy that I now prefer to come by the state transport bus,” she says. A Maharashtra state transport bus makes a trip every day to Savarpada.

As soon as Savarpada comes into sight,Raut perks up. It’s been almost a year since she last visited home. She has been training in Kenya and Italy. She proudly points to her family’s farm. “The rice looks good. Last time I came,everyone was busy sowing,” she says.

Raut’s parents—Sunetra and Ramdas,a former forest guard—are waiting outside their two-room house in the village. “I am tired of telling my parents to move to Nashik and live with me. They just won’t agree. So finally I have decided to build a nice house here for them,” she says.

Inside the house,piles of onions fight for space with Raut’s trophies. “I am not surprised that Kavita is such a good athlete. If she could run to school almost 6 km away in an hour,over two hills on the way,she can definitely win prizes running on an even track,” says her proud mother.

The runners

Singh’s discovery of Raut was just the start. Already,another protege,Monika Athre,is making waves on the national circuit. Anjana Thamke,the gangly 15-year-old junior national record holder,has been identified as a future star. “She is built like a proper athlete. Those gold-medal-winning athletes we trained with in Kenya are built exactly like Anjana,” says Raut.

Singh’s reputation as a coach precedes him. There is a queue of parents wanting their children to train under him. “Everything that we do here is regulated. Speed,endurance and strength are the basics needed to become a successful athlete. We concentrate on these three factors every day of the week. We have hill runs,interval training,endurance jogs of 15 to 20 km. I make these children train everyday except on Sunday evenings,” says Singh,who scouts for talent at various district and taluka events. At present,there are 70 children training under him.

Sukhdev Kale,61,who assists Singh in coaching the long-distance runners,says Singh is a methodical man. “He has issued all our athletes diaries with their workouts carefully mapped out. Pulse rates and muscle wear and tear are carefully noted down and then used to develop training schedules in the future so that the athletes get the best out of their bodies,” he says.

Kisan Tadvi is the reigning junior state and national gold medallist in 3,000 metres. Tadvi comes from Bardi,a remote village in Nandurbar district. Son of a farmer,the 15-year-old came to Nashik on a scholarship offered by the Maharashtra government for tribal children. Tadvi,who secured 92 per cent in Class 8,has won four national medals in the last two years. “This kind of running is definitely better than what I used to do back in the village. Chasing cattle over hillocks and boulders is no fun,” Tadvi says.

Gulab More,18, is from Mamtapur in Yeola taluka. Youngest of four brothers,his parents are manual labourers. Two of his brothers are cowherds. Till three years ago,More also grazed cattle in pastures in the mountains.

“Running behind cattle didn’t give me any medals. I had figured in the merit list of the primary school scholarship and that gave me a chance to come to Nashik. It was here that ‘Singh Sir’ spotted my talent as a long jumper,” he says. More won a silver medal in the 2007 junior national meet in Kochi and is hoping to claim the gold in the upcoming junior nationals in Lucknow next month.

Many of the athletes at the Nashik SAI centre are students of Bhonsala Military School. The boarders get up at five in the morning for their training session and then go straight to school which ends at two in the afternoon. After lunch and a quick nap,they are back on the running track for their evening session at four. Tadvi says adjusting to such a regimented life was difficult at first. “We get up at five and don’t sleep till 10 at night. We train,go to school and then we study for two hours at night. In the village,I never had much of a routine,” he says.

A few athletes like Gulab More and Hari Chavan,a promising sprinter,stay at a hostel for tribal youth run by the state government on the outskirts of Nashik. The business group Mahindra & Mahindra has a tie-up with Singh and has given him Rs 10 lakh for the children’s training. Athletes have been given trainers and other equipment from this fund.

So,what makes this area produce so many athletes? Singh says tribal children are blessed with natural hardy constitution. “They have never been exposed to any junk food. Many of these boys and girls have grown up eating wild fruit,coarse bread,pulses that have just been harvested and fish caught straight from mountain streams. All this is highly nutritional. Also their daily chores,be it herding cattle,working in the fields or even running to school,give them natural strength. Here we train them scientifically and also use all their physical attributes to maximise their athletic gains,” he says.

As the shadows lengthen over the school ground,the football team kicks up a mini dust storm. In the swirling dust,Singh’s pupils dutifully run laps on the mud track. Sara Nagre,the seven-year-old in the group,tries to keep pace with Raut and Athre as they complete their quota of laps. Finally,she falls back and almost staggers to Singh. But the girl with two long plaits has a smile on her face. Pointing to Raut’s tracksuit emblazoned with the national flag,she says,“I want that tracksuit one day. I want to be just like tai (sister).”