Bharatpur (Rajasthan)[India], December 11 (ANI): There could not be extra contrasting backgrounds for 2 athletes, actually. During the boxing occasion of the 2025 Khelo India University Games (KIUG) in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur, Bharti represented Maharshi Dayanand University, Haryana, within the girls’s minimal (45-48kg) class and hauled in a silver, whereas Devika Satyajit Ghorpade represented Savitribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra within the girls’s fly 52kg and captured a gold as anticipated.
Both athletes come from very completely different socio-economic backgrounds. 23-year-old Bharti’s father works in labour at a brick manufacturing unit, incomes Rs 250-300 per day. Devika’s father, however, owns a building firm.
Frankly, each athletes deserve a whole lot of credit score. Bharti for not giving up within the face of economic adversity and Devika for staying grounded, for being aspirational and never selecting a cushty, run-of-the-mill life.
20-year-old Devika needed to be knowledgeable western dancer within the first place. She began taking western dance lessons in Pune as a bit lady. But in 2016, whereas watching the Rio Olympics on TV, her father inspired her to take up a sport, leaving her torn between wrestling and boxing.
And then an inspiring article on Olympian and Arjuna Awardee Manoj Pingale from Pune helped her make up her thoughts in favour of boxing. Bharti, in the meantime, was impressed by her next-door cousin in Rohtak, Monika, who went on to symbolize India with success.
Bharti, who comes from the Scheduled Caste, is kind of proper when she says a bit monetary assist can go a good distance within the lifetime of an athlete. ‘Athletes from our backgrounds wrestle rather a lot. At the beginning, we do not even have the naked minimal like fundamental tools, weight-reduction plan and lodging. And frankly talking, if issues do not change miraculously, which do not for lots of us, our performances and the drive to succeed take successful over time. All of us can do rather a lot higher if we do not have to fret about these little issues,’ Bharti, who received her first KIUG medal in her third try, mentioned.
‘That’s the place a platform like Khelo India comes into play, as they make issues a bit simpler for us. But we want extra assist on the degree we’re. Nobody wants assist after they turn into a celebrity. It’s at our degree the place we want assist,’ the 2019 Youth National gold winner in Uttarakhand added.
Let’s not overlook Devika in our sympathy for Bharti… She is a really achieved athlete. She is the 2022 Youth World Champion. The championship occurred in Spain. A few months earlier than, she had received a gold medal too on the Golden Glove of Vojvodina Youth Boxing Tournament in Serbia.
At the 2021 Asian Junior Championships in Dubai, she received a bronze medal, and on the 2024 Under-22 Asian Championships in Kazakhstan, she received one other. Besides, she has three Khelo India Youth Games (KIYG) golds to her identify and trains on the prestigious SAI National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (beforehand generally known as Aurangabad).
‘I’m concentrating on the Senior Nationals. If I win there, I’ll symbolize the nation within the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the Asian Games in Japan subsequent yr. Khelo India is a superb platform because it gives so many aggressive alternatives,’ Devika, who featured in her first KIUG and beat Mohini from the Sports University of Haryana within the ultimate, mentioned. (ANI)
