Maharashtra’s Pooja, Orissa’s Swasti end cycling events on a high

Guwahati: Maharashtra’s Pooja Danole has whipped up a unique routine to celebrate her success in the Khelo India Youth Games: first, she lifts her palm and opens her five fingers to connote the number of medals that she has won in the cycling events; then, she drops one finger, her thumb, to show four, the number of gold that she has cornered.
 
The 16-year-old Kolhapur lass conquered the 5km Scratch race, the 2000m Individual pursuit, the Individual time trial Road and the Individual Road Race to show her versatility; in fact, it was a ruthless domination of the sport in two diametrically variant categories – the track and the road.
 
Pooja isn’t satisfied though. “I got a bronze in the team sprint,  would have been nice to get the gold there too,” she ruefully said. “I had decided when I arrived that I will try and get gold in every event. I have missed one.”
 
Barely over five foot high, Pooja comes from a family of wrestlers who was pushed towards swimming at an early age. Four years ago, she changed sports and cycling became her new home.
 
After highlight performances at the district level, she was scouted and picked up for selection to train at the Kreeda Prabodhini Academy in Pune. The sports facility, funded by the Maharashtra government, has contributed almost all the medals the state has won in Guwahati.
 
The state’s fifteen medals (eight gold, three silver and four bronze) are almost twice that of its nearest competitor Karnataka. Dipali Patil, the head coach of the team as well as the academy, credits this to the superb scouting system they have in place in the state.
 
“Our cyclists come from all across the state,”  she said, “we have a lot of district championships, and even state level events from where we pick up talented youngsters and offer them full scholarships to train at the academy.”
 
Pooja is one of many who have graduated from the Academy to the SAI Centre in Delhi, thanks to multiple national medals, and superlative performances. Patil says more than 12 cyclists from her academy alone have been handpicked to be part of the SAI Centre in the past few years.
 
While Maharashtra’s domination was an overall team effort, with the medals, spread across events, genders, age groups and cyclists, Odisha relied on just two people to help them in the table.
 
The first of those was the first-ever gold medallist for a Khelo India cycling event, Dinesh Kumar. The second went three better.
 
Like her fellow Odiya medallist, Swasti Singh is also from Rourkela. “Odisha’s cycling is Rourkela centric. Because that’s where the best coaches are,” Swasti laughed.
 
The daughter of a Rourkela Steel Plant employee, the 18-year-old started cycling in the 2015 Biju Pattnaik Hockey Stadium under the watchful eyes of Sushil Das and slowly climbed up the ranks.
 
A multiple national champion, Swasti also won bronze in the 2-km individual pursuit for India in the Track Asia Cup Cycling Championship in New Delhi last year. At the Khelo India Youth Games, much like Pooja, she dominated every event she entered, winning the U21 3000m Individual pursuit and the 7.5km Scratch race and finishing second in the Road Race.
 
“I was a bit disappointed with the road race. It was a frenetic finish, with lots of us dashing towards the line. I’d led the race easily and should have held on for the win. It was disappointing that I didn’t,” she said. “So when it came to time on the track I was mentally prepared to ensure I wouldn’t repeat those mistakes.”
 
With three medals in the bag, she will head back to the SAI Centre in Delhi with a renewed focus on the Track Nationals later this year.