India finds another spearhead in Sumit Antil

On the two occasions that Devendra Jhajharia has competed in a Paralympics before Tokyo, he has set a new world record. On Monday morning, he saw someone else walk into his territory: Dinesh Priyantha Herath. The Sri Lankan erased the Indian’s javelin throw F46 record set in the 2016 Rio Paralympics. The 40-year-old Jhajharia responded with a throw that went past his own Rio mark.

Two throws that bettered a world record in the same event. Beat that.

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Sumit Antil did. Just hours later. Without even needing to be pushed by anyone else.

The 23-year-old lit up the javelin throw F64 final under lights at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo on Monday evening, smashing his own world record in the category (62.88m set at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai) three times out of the total six attempts. Throw No 1: 66.95m, world record. Throw No. 2: 68.08m, world record. Throw No. 5: 68.55m, world record.

It was a day to cherish for Indian javelin throwers at the Tokyo Paralympics. It was a day to cherish for Indians at the Tokyo Paralympics. India won five medals on a Manic Monday—borrowing the famous Wimbledon term—an incredible single-day haul that eclipsed its entire tally of four at the 2016 Rio Paralympics. India’s medallists comprised 19-year-old shooter Avani Lekhara, who became the first Indian woman to win gold at the Paralympics, 40-year-old Jhajharia who won silver to be the only Indian with three individual Paralympic medals, Sundar Singh Gurjar who finished behind Jhajharia for bronze, Yogesh Kathuniya with a discus throw F56 silver and Antil rounding off the day just like it began from Avani—with a golden touch and a new world record. “I didn’t quite understand what was happening around me. It was like a dream,” Antil said over phone.

Having breached the 65m-mark in domestic competitions earlier this year, Antil was confident that he had the script to rewrite the record. He also competed with able-bodied athletes on the domestic circuit, including with Neeraj Chopra in the Indian GP in March in Patiala. He finished seventh with a throw of 66.43m in the event won by Chopra with 88.07m. “I knew I would break the world record. I wanted to touch 70m. Till the last throw, I was going for that 70m mark,” he said.

Not that he thought it would be a walk in the park. “It was a tough field. I was under a lot of pressure. I didn’t sleep well the entire night,” he said. He also couldn’t sleep for months together in 2015, when the youngster from Sonepat met with an accident which forced his left leg to be amputated from below the knee. “It was January and Sumit was coming home on his bike and collided with a tractor carrying cement,” said his mother Nirmla Devi. “He got dragged for some distance and lost one leg. He was in a hospital for many months and we prayed for his life.”

Antil had lost his father, who was in the Air Force, when he just seven and had always dreamt of joining the armed forces as way of carrying forward the legacy. “I hit the lowest point mentally during that period. My dream was to get into the Army, which couldn’t happen after my disability. It broke my dreams, and it broke me along with it,” Antil said.

His mother pushed him to start picking up the pieces again. Antil, a big, muscular man, had an interest in sport, and was a wrestler—“but not at a good level”—before his accident.

In 2016, Antil got fitted with an artificial leg and a year later he was made aware of para sports, and was introduced to the javelin by coach Virender Dhankhar. “The moment I saw the sport I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I never looked back after that,” Antil said.

The love at first sight didn’t take long to blossom. Antil finished fifth at the 2018 Asian Para Games, won silver at the 2019 worlds in Dubai (Sandeep Chaudhary, who won gold there, ended fourth on Monday) and at the World Para Athletics Grand Prix in Italy. It was instant success, but with plenty of sweat and blood, literally.

At the National Para Athletics Championship in March this year, Antil suffered from persistent bleeding inside his prosthetic leg, resulting from wear and tear due to overuse. “Not a day went by when my leg wouldn’t pain. It would bleed quite a lot. I wouldn’t even show it to my mother. She told me to rest a little. But I said, ‘no, I’ll only rest after the Paralympics,” Antil said. It perhaps explained his huge roar, with both his wrists in the air, after the gold-winning throw in Tokyo.

A similar roar was let out by another Indian, almost twice his age, in the same stadium hours earlier. Herath, the Sri Lankan, had smashed Jhajharia’s F46 world mark of 63.97m set in Rio with an effort of 67.79 in his third attempt. With throws of 60.28 and 60.62 from his first two attempts, Jhajharia knew he had to raise the bar, like he so often has in the past.

And so Jhajharia loaded up, his javelin moving up and down above his right shoulder while taking deep breaths. Then came the big throw, and then the bigger scream that lasted as long as the javelin swirled in the air. When it finally landed at 64.35m, Jhajharia screeched again, his face a picture of fury.

Moments later, that face wore a smile, and shoulders the India flag. At 40, Jhajharia had won his third Paralympic medal, a silver. It’s not the colour the man from Churu in Rajasthan is used to wearing around his neck at the Paralympics, for both his 2004 Athens (62.15m) and 2016 Rio (63.97m) medals have been gold. But his throw of 64.35m, a new personal best, has bettered his Rio world mark.

“I gave everything I had to win another gold, but sometimes things don’t go as you plan,” Jhajharia said. “But to win a hat-trick of medals makes me proud.”

Jhajharia also had company on the podium this time. Gurjar won bronze with a best throw of 64.01m, a happy turnaround after the drama he went through in Rio, where he was disqualified from competing after failing to reach the call room on time for his event.

Years of toil shattered for being seconds late, Gurjar was in no mental state to compete again until his coach MP Saini brought him back on track with the help of professional counsellors. Up and throwing again, Gurjar, who lost his left hand in 2015 after a metal sheet dropped on him at his friend’s house, won gold at the 2017 World Championships, and again in the 2019 edition. Then he dreamed again of the Paralympics. That dream came true.

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