The Longest Yard

Later,when tracked down at Hyderabads Artillery Centre,the army mans home for many years,Ram Singh frowns as he explains his grudge against the media which troubles him once a year before the Mumbai marathon,known for its cash rewards and its internationally-recognised course.

Pareshaan karte ho aap log race se pehle, he says with an exaggerated groan. To avoid the annual media haranguing,Yadav and his mates had checked into a little-known boarding close to the marathons start-line. And on a pleasantly cool Sunday,the 29-year-old burst out of the starting pack and into the finishing tape 2 hrs 16 minutes 59 seconds later,to earn for himself a rare qualification in the marathon at the London Olympics,becoming only the eighth Indian track-and-field athlete to qualify for the Games.

India last sent a marathon runner to the Olympics a whole 30 years ago at the Moscow Games Shivnath Singh was also unknown beyond the countrys athletics circles of 70s-80s. Ram Singh Yadav prefers a similar obscurity while training in an already forlorn athletic discipline. Its also the fauji-proclivity to hide behind the uniform,and not stand out. Blame the sport too: Pheidippides takes some Googling,before the legend of the Greek soldier messenger who died running from the Battle of Marathon to Athens,appears on the screen.

Ram Singhs other pet grouse is the close-windowed,artificial air-cooling of big hotels. Its why he flees the five-star accommodation offered to Indian runners pampered once a year at Mumbai by the organisers. Cushy comfort is alien to the Indian marathon runner who lives in dorms and trudges on dusty roads daily in grimy heat. For the past two years,the AC was a pain and it hurt my start timings. It affects my breathing badly. I like normal hotels, he rants. You cant blame him for being ungrateful,merely for having very specific demands for the facilities he needs to practise. He also readily admits to being misunderstood when a dozen microphones are thrust his way in big,bad Mumbai.

But Yadav is no wide-eyed villager,who drowns in the din of the big city whenever he races in Mumbai. He has won the top prize in the Indian category of the marathon,four times in the last five years. He grew up in this city for a large part of his schooling years,before his parents shifted to Babiyan village in Varanasi,taking along with them the youngest of their four children. His father worked as a milk distributor from Yadav Nagar in Jogeshwari (East),and Yadav took his first athletics strides in Mumbais inter-school competitions where he competed in the 100m,200m sprints and the long jump till Class VII.

Once he shifted back to Varanasi as a 13-year-old,the bat-eared boy who loved his crew-cut,kept at his sport,but started chasing the ambition to join the army,like many others from his village. My elder brother could not join,and he stayed back in Mumbai to find a job there. I didnt want to give up,because every family in my village neighbourhood had someone in the army, he says. Selected soon for the havaldar ranks,his tryst with marathons was underway.

The Sarvatra Stadium,a fine facility for athletics with a synthetic track,sports medicine centre and a modestly equipped gym,at Hyderabads Artillery Centre has a magnificent backdrop of the Golconda fort. Secluded from the city centre,the dhol-bhangra beats from a slow-moving Stallion army truck bring some verve to the still air as a boisterous basketball team returns with a gleaming inter-battalion cup. Yadav remembers travelling in one of these olive trucks,the lot of them herded into one vehicle,headed for the athletics trials as 21-22 year-olds. He first trialled for the 5,000m,10,000m,and coach Amrik Singh who has been his shadow ever since picked him out of the crowd for both his persistence in following orders and his running-style. He was no stand-out as he won no medals in those events,but the coachs scouting eye had marked out his favourite charge,much like Golcondas diamond merchants of yore would pick their crown-jewels from the teeming ancient mines.

Packed off on cross-country runs while hiking up the granite fort,Yadav showed the right determination in negotiating the uneven stomping surface of its bastions and drawbridges,exploring the fortress nooks along the way,and building both his stamina and a sense of exploration. He was soon clocking encouraging timings,and ran a phenomenal 37 minutes cross country at high-altitude Ooty in 2003,that drafted him into the Artillery Centres marathon squad. Training began along the adjoining Shankarpalli Road,which with its natural bumps and challenging gradients made for a formidable marathon course.

Amrik Singh would be a constant companion,on a beat-up motorbike the athletics coachs commandant had allowed him to buy,riding on first gear even as Ram Singh accumulated the mileage month after month. Harnessed to a tyre to create resistance,the bunch of long-distance runners would set out at 4 am with the coach piloting them through miles of asphalt-thumping. A dry-fruits refresher was concocted in the army mess,and Yadav was presented his first Speed shoe,now upgraded to a Pittsbull,all procured within the allotted budget. He won the Meerut Marathon in 2006 with timings (2:23) grazing those of the reigning runners five years ago Chinappa and KC Ramu and Amrik had handy raw material to work with.

Coach and ward have been inseparable since 2003,with Yadav reposing blind faith in his mentor. His training mates have pulled quite a few pranks on him,attributing the commands to the coach. He listens unquestioningly to Amrik Singh. Saab ne kaha,toh Ram Singh ko woh karnaa hi hai. We keep fooling him,ask him to stand,sit,run,eat whatever,and he falls for it each time, a fellow athlete guffaws. Its also left to the coach to convince his family parents,wife and children to let him stay away from home for years when training. Its difficult for them to understand why Im never at home. I have two kids,aged 9 and 7,who miss me. But I dont want my family to disturb my dream of running at the Olympics and do my best to reach my target 2hr:06min (almost 10 minutes less than what he clocked at the qualifier), Yadav says a touch harshly,but candidly. The Mumbai marathon,in which he finished 12th,was followed closely both in Hyderabad and Varanasi. Yadavs coach was the first to speak to his family,both overcome with emotion at his breaching the first barrier.

Making the Olympics cut was a big deal for Yadav,and more circuitous than the up-and-down hills and straights that Mumbais marathon route follows. In 2008,at the same venue,Ram Singh had missed qualification by 3 seconds. Dignitaries and athletics officials callously announced on stage that they would ensure he got onto the Beijing bus by enabling his participation in other marathons. The promise was speedily forgotten. From there began Ram Singhs resentment of officials like Suresh Kalmadi and the media,the ones who never followed up. They should have never announced that. Big mistake. I felt cheated, he says. His ambition stoked,he was then mocked at by many who found him twiddling his thumbs as the Beijing Olympics approached. He ditched training and sulked for half a year. A self-confessed fan of dard-bhare gaane,he even called up All India Radio (AIR),sending in requests for melancholic numbers.

Coach Amrik Singh was ready with a beat-up Maruti 800 this time,to get Ram Singh to run when he shrugged off his discontent. Never known to miss a season on account of injury,owing to his strict fitness regimen and core strength,Yadav was finally ready to get back in groove. He touched the 2:18.03 mark in 2009,but was lacklustre in the next two seasons. This time Id decided Ill qualify no matter what, he says.

Mumbai,where it had all gone wrong,was where he headed after a lean season,where he trained more,and ran barely enough. A week before Mumbai,I asked him to do 80 rounds of our 400m track,and seeing that timing I knew he would qualify, Amrik Singh says. Yadav,helped by an altitude-stint at Ooty to increase lung capacity,and running the smartest race of his athletic life,stayed glued to the second batch of Kenyan runners and even beat a couple of their second-stringers to the finish sprint to secure the London berth. Painfully reserved in conversations,Ram Singh Yadav found his groove as he hit his stride,and came off the Bandra Worli Sea Link where people lined along the street had begun to recognise the marathon runner. They broke into Bharat Mata ki Jai,and all the tiredness vanished, he says. The runner was ready to embrace Mumbai,after a dip in affection four years ago.