Girls, uninterrupted: India's sportswomen let it rip
Over the last few years, young sportswomen have exploded onto the global stage with medal-winning performances. Their stories of perseverance amid hardship are now spurring a legion of determined girls around the country
Image by : Anand Sah for Forbes India
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At Rajgangpur village in the interiors of Sundargarh district, Odisha, Sunil Tigga, an ex-armyman trains young girls and boys for free. The kids, who can’t even afford shoes, hope to make it to formal training academies. Local hockey tournaments are held on weekends where a goat is awarded as the prize.
Odisha, which has produced national hockey players such as Gloria Dung Dung and Roselin Dung Dung, has been getting the most marginalised and oppressed groups to the fore through its Sports Hostel scheme, which was launched in 1985. Under the scheme, children between 10 and 14 are scouted from grassroot levels across the state and are trained in a variety of sports.
Image by : Subrata Biswas for Forbes India
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Rinki Majhi, on her way back from training with her under-9 football team at Joshra village in the Somra Bazaar area of Bengal’s Hooghly district. Girls like her and Meghna Saha come to train every day, from homes of farmers or construction labourers. Rinki’s team travels to Kolkata to play in the Baby League, a talent-scouting league format football competition for children between 4 and 13. The event is underway in Kolkata after completing respective legs in Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Assam.
Image by : Madhu Kapparath
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At the Sports Authority of India Gopichand National Badminton Academy in Hyderabad, the results of an exacting fitness regimen and training—three sessions of two hours every day—are showing on Meghana Reddy and other players. Meghana won the doubles gold in under-15 Badminton Asia Championships in Myanmar last October. Her parents, police officer Ravinder Reddy and teacher Katha Reddy, made significant lifestyle and career changes to support their child’s schedule and ambition.
Image by : Mexy Xavier
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Aditi Parab (second from right), who won gold in the under-17 4x400 m relay at the Khelo India Youth Games in January, spent 16 months training on the concrete steps of Dadoji Konddev Stadium in Thane, Mumbai’s neighbouring district. The athletes don’t step on the stadium’s infield as the grass is protected for cricket matches. Seen here (from left) are Aditi’s co-trainees Nandini Kaskar, Sanika Nate and Akansha Gavade.
Image by : Subrata Biswas for Forbes India
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Fencing’s future hopefuls, Sowmiya S and Vedika Kaushik from Kerala, travelled in the crowded sleeper coach of the Silchar-Thiruvananthapuram Express, for three days each way, to participate in the Senior National Fencing Championship in Guwahati in February. They are trained by Sports Authority of India’s Sagar Lagu at the organisation’s centre in Thalassery, Kerala.
Image by : Amit Verma
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A glassful of fresh buffalo milk and the love of a grandmother are at the heart of wrestler Bhumi Phogat’s regimen in the rural hinterland of Rohtak, Haryana, where women wrestlers are a healthy aberration in a patriarchal, feudal society.
Bhumi, who recently won a gold medal at the national wrestling championship held in Cuttack, Odisha, trains at the Chhotu Ram Stadium Wrestling Academy in Rohtak. The academy, which has given India its first Olympic medallist in women’s wrestling (Sakshi Malik) and over 31 international wrestlers, is the training ground for more than 100 children, including champions Mansi and Khushi Ahlawat.
Image by : Pravin Bajpai for Forbes India
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Bustling activity at the Madhya Pradesh State Shooting Academy in Bhopal. The academy has been making news lately with its scientific training programme and a host of medal-winning sharpshooters, including 18-year-old trap shooter Manisha Keer, who made history by becoming the first Indian woman to win a silver in the junior shotgun event at the International Shooting Sports Federation championship in South Korea last September. Olympian Mansher Singh, who specialises in double trap and trap shooting, coaches at the academy.
Image by : Mongjam Ajit Kumar Singh for Forbes India
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In February, young women lined up at the All Manipur Polo Association ground in Iroisemba, Manipur, to learn from senior polo players, despite a shutdown and curfew in capital city Imphal following volatile protests around the Citizen Amendment Bill. Manipur’s players, on their famed Manipur ponies, have made a mark around the world in women’s polo.
Image by : Madhu Kapparath
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Located in outer Delhi, Shahbad Dairy is a badland with one of the highest rates of missing children. Sant Lal, an activist from Chitrakoot, arrived here in 2007 and set up Saksham, an initiative to empower schoolchildren with support from CRY. In 2014, alarmed by news of abductions and rapes, Lal began thinking of an initiative that would empower girls. He thought of a sport that connects with the young and old alike, and started an all-girls cricket team in 2015. They played a local tournament against a boys’ teams. When the girls won and paraded their trophy through the narrow streets, the message came home.
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