Docile Manjit ran that ‘one race’ to win dream gold

Satyawan Malik

Manjit Singh Chahal, 28, clinched a gold medal for India in the men’s 800 m race in the Asian Games in Jakarta (Indonesia). He became the second Indian after Charles Borromeo to win a gold medal in the men’s 800 m race.  Borromeo had won a gold medal in the Asian Games in New Delhi in 1982.

Manjit’s father Randhir Singh, a farmer at Ujhana village in Narwana of Jind district, talks emphatically and looks elated and humble while giving minute details.

Since his childhood Manjit rises early morning. His diet consists of almonds and milk plus homemade ladoos. 

Manjit was 10 when he started practising running. He passed Class X and XII from SD Model School and Ch. Devi Lal School, Narwana, respectively. He won many positions in the National School Games. He was one of the 15 students selected for the Sports Nursery at Narwana in 2003. The coaches, Mewa Singh and Karan Singh, read his potential as a sprinter and insisted on his joining the Jalandhar Sports Academy after Class XII in 2005. Manjit did their bidding.  

After Jalandhar, Manjit joined the NIS, Patiala, from 2010 to 2013. He participated in the Commonwealth Games in 2010, but didn’t get any medal. He won gold medals at the national level and remained fourth in the Asian Championship at Pune in 2013. He attended the India Camp at Bengaluru in 2013 but was not selected for the 17th Asian Games, 2014, held in South Korea. That he was not selected for the Asian Games though he stood second in the trials dealt a setback to him. It dampened his spirits, creating qualms about his future participations. It was hard for his father to deal with him being in agony. This was then his father categorically asked him to either continue with the sport or get married and live a normal life. The ‘introvert, soft-spoken and obedient’ Manjit went by his father’s advice and got married to Kiran on September 27, 2015. That was taken as an endgame of his sporting career.

For the next six months, he did not practise and disagreements cropped up between him and his willing father. Realising the growing unease within them, his father decided to have one more chance. He told Majit, “Ek race aisi laga de ki duniya yaad kare” (let one race be that good that the world remembers). Manjit was ready again.

Unfortunately, Manjit had suffered many injuries in 2015. With a hamstring injury resurfacing, the ONGC almost wrote him off as an athlete, ending his Rs 15,000 contractual job in March 2016. This created untold financial constraints for him, but his father somehow managed Rs 30,000 every month.

That he wasn’t selected for the Commonwealth Games held in Australia in March this year left him, yet again, disconsolate. Then he decided to go to the Madras Regiment Centre at Ooty for more rigorous training under a new coach, Amrish Kumar, an ex-Army man. The coach demanded strict discipline and restrictions — ‘no car driving’, ‘no mobile phone’, ‘no home going’ and Manjit agreed to all. His father just reminded him of ‘ek race’ before he left for Jakarta.

On August 29, people in Jind were glued to their television sets with hopes interspersed with anxiety. As the starting pistol went off, it was all going expectedly. All bets and hopes were pinned on his India team-mate Jinson Johnson from Kerala. Manjit had never outrun Jinson in any tournament. He kept himself behind four athletes for one and a half round. And then accelerated, showing strength, endurance and courage to make it really that ‘one race’. In last 30 metres, he sprinted to the finishing line in 1:46.15 seconds, outdoing Jinson (1:46.35 seconds).

Manjit acknowledges that a young, 20-year-old, gold medallist javelin thrower in Jakarta, Neeraj Chopra, inspired him, saying ‘go for it’, ‘don’t let anything else distract you’, ‘do it for your country’.  

(The writer is Associate Professor of English, 

Government College, Jind)