Picture Credit: Twitter
The Chairman of Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra has offered a vehicle as a gift to Ram Baboo, the bronze medal winner for India in the 35km race walking event at the Asian Games 2023. The 68-year-old sent out a post on his official X account, talking about the “unstoppable courage & determination” of the Indian athlete, who has been a daily wage worker in his journey to become a medallist at the Asiad this year.
According to the report in the PTI, Ram Baboo was born in a village in Sonbhadra district, Uttar Pradesh, to a manual labourer and his homemaker wife. As the only son in the family along with three sisters, his father could only bring in an income of INR 3,000-3,500 a month, which was far from enough to sustain them.
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Amidst all the challenges, the mother of Ram Baboo had a key role in insisting him to join Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV), where his journey as an athlete in the long-distance running began. But, after developing knee pain, he changed his career to race walking on the advice of his coach Pramod Yadav, before connecting with new coach Chandrabahan Yadav in Varanasi.
After training at the SAI Centre in Bhopal in 2019, Ram Baboo had to return home to work as a labourer in MGNREGA to sustain his career, when the pandemic struck in 2020. He was quoted as saying to PTI about his experience, “I have done everything possible in my life so far, from working as a waiter in Varanasi to digging up pits along with my father for road construction under MGNREGA scheme at our village.”
Anand Mahindra, who learnt about the story of Ram Baboo through a video from The Better India on X, he shared it with a caption which read, “Daily wage worker to Asian Games Medallist. Unstoppable courage & determination. Please give me his contact number @betterindia I’d like to support his family by giving them any tractor or pickup truck of ours they want.”
