Meet Judo champion Avtar Singh whose Olympic dreams were once fading and will now represent India at Rio Olympics

Rio Olympics 2016 are starting from today and India has sent its largest contingent ever with 119 participants. This time, expectations from our Indian athletes are quite high and everyone is expecting India to have a medal tally in double numbers.

Of course the pressure on our Indian athletes is building, but they have trained hard for it. Most of them are representing India at Olympics for the first time and given the abysmal state of most sports in India, many of them have their stories of struggle to share.

One such Indian athlete is Avtar Singh, India’s first judoka to qualify for Olympics after 2004.

Singh, who is not nervous and is quite confident of giving his best at the international sporting event, has struggled and did whatever it takes to reach this level. For once he thought his Olympics dreams were just over.

Avtar, who will play in 90-kg weight category, belongs to a small village of Gurudaspur in Punjab. His parents Shingara Singh and Sukhvinder Kaur are proud of their son who managed the great feat with meagre means.

Avtar’s father Shingara is a Class-4 employee in the health department who broke fixed deposit of Rs 4 lakh saved in 21 years for their son’s training.

Gurdaspur is a hub of judoka in India and boasts of at least 30 judo clubs. Avtar trained at the Shahid Bhagat Singh JFI training centre and was first coached by Amarjit Shastri.

Avtar joined the centre in 2005 and never skipped training even though the centre was in a dire state with old and rusted gymnasium equipments.
For his championships also, Avtar’s family struggled to meet the expenses for the foreign trips so that he could compete in international events. Eventually, he improved his ranking to 70.

When the news broke that he is representing India at Rio Olympics, his village broke into jubilation.

In the past, Avtar has won numerous international accolades like 2016 South Asian Games champion, Commonwealth Junior Championship in the 81kg category, 2011 national World Cup in Mongolia, etc.

The wait is now for an Olympic medal.

(Images: Facebook)