|
| Bulls eye! |
| Aabhas Sharma / New Delhi Aug 14, 2010, 00:26 IST |
|
The World Championships, a gold medal. Life doesn’t get much sweeter than this, Tejaswini Sawant tells Aabhas Sharma
It wasn’t easy for Ravindra Sawant, a Kolhapur based chemical engineer, to save up the money to buy his daughter a Feinwerkbau air rifle way back in 2001. But he did, and also spared no effort or expense to help the youngest of his three daughters realize her dream, nurtured since she was 13, of becoming a world class shooter.
Perhaps it was that idealism that helped. Perhaps it was her own talent, and the will to succeed and win. Perhaps it was her family’s backing, and of course the benevolence of Lady Luck. And perhaps it was a combination of all this. But a gold medal at the world championships (just concluded in Munich) is no small achievement and talking to Business Standard, 29-year-old Tejaswini Sawant is both proud and emotional, dedicating the win to her father who is sadly not alive to see this pinnacle of his daughter’s career Back in 1994, this may have seemed like a pipe dream for a girl from a middle-class family, with no finances to back her.
In fact there was a point when her father quit his job and started a small business which folded up soon enough, putting the family through some really hard times. “I often thought I should give up my dream and not put more pressure on the family,” she says. “But my mother and my sisters encouraged me and said I should not give up.”
Growing up in Kolhapur, she had a regular childhood. She was good in academics but was always more interested in sports. Her mother, Sunita, had been a state-level volleyball player in her youth. Her father dreamt big for Tejaswini, or Teju, as she is fondly called and she has not let him down. In 2004, she represented India at the SAF Games, won a gold medal and continued to shine on the national circuit before reaping Commonwealth glory — two golds in Melbourne in 2006 Shooting is a sport which requires total dedication and hours and hours of practice.
At the Dudhali range in Kolhapur, where she started practicing, not many facilities were provided. “I remember how difficult it was in those days with no support ,” she recalls. But she didn’t let that affect her too much and continued practicing with the same rigour and determination. “My father always told me that money doesn’t make you successful but talent and determination does,” she says. We all know what Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra and his family had to go through to realize his dream. “It’s not an easy sport to pursue as you need ammunition, guns and proper facilities to compete with the world’s best.”
Things took a turn for the better when Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation which supports and promotes athletes, took her under their wing in 2008. They have provided her all the financial support , whether for equipment, ammunition or sending her abroad for training. Thanks to them, she no longer takes the train to reach shooting events, but travels by air, which means she saves time and gets those few extra days to hone her skills. “I owe them a lot and they have helped me regain my confidence.”
In the last few years, she suffered a dip in form and missed out on the Olympics quota for Beijing. “That was a difficult time but my family kept my morale up,” she says. In fact, three months before the World Championships in Munich she was feeling down and out. Then her Kazakh coach Stanislav Lapidus chalked out a special training programme for her which paid dividends. “He really instilled a lot of self-belief and confidence in me,” she says. The training programme involved working on the basics and getting back into the groove.
Tejaswini lives in Pune now. When not on the shooting range, she loves to spend time with her family and friends. Music is another passion and she loves listening to Marathi folk music. “I try and catch up on the latest songs as well as listen to old time classics.”
But for the moment it’s adulation all the way and she’s reveling in it. Now her next target is the CWG in October and the Asian Games after that. But the disappointment of missing out on a berth for the Beijing Olympics still rankles. “I want to qualify for the London Olympics in 2012 as it was my father’s long-cherished dream,” she says determinedly. We have no reason to believe that she will not realise that ambition.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Read Business news in |  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisements |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Content Guide
