Fixing roads to winning medals

Ram Baboo's tickets to Paris are not confirmed yet, but he sure makes a good case for his inclusion.

The question was simple: ‘Why did you take up race walking?’

The response was simple: “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

The entirety of the seven or so minutes spent chatting with Ram Baboo - the latest race walker from India to meet the Olympic qualifying mark in the men’s 20km event - was littered with matter-of-fact statements, some humour, but mostly, these were words of a man who knew nothing about being anything else but himself. 

Baboo has a rawness to him which athletes often lose when they make the international stage. Then again, most athletes have not been through what the 24-year-old has endured. 

“I had to do something to change the circumstances of my life,” he tells DH hours after returning from Dudince in Slovakia. “I could not let it go on like that because something bad would have happened to someone at home if I had not stepped up.”

Baboo was born into poverty in Bahura in Uttar Pradesh, and it was not farfetched to believe that he was going to remain in his lane. Poverty breeds more of the same, thought Baboo, but he had decided that he was going to shake things up since he had nothing going on anyway. 

He travelled to Varanasi to pursue a career as an athlete when he was 17-years-old. He paid rent (Rs 1500 per month), and made do with a little bit he would get from his family of agricultural workers. When that wasn’t enough, he ended up waiting tables at a local restaurant. 

“I would get abused by people there all the time,” he says. “They were very disrespectful to me, but I knew I was meant for bigger things even when they were saying I would not become anything. Even my family (of six members) didn’t think much of me but that’s how it works, no? When you’re poor, you don't think that far ahead. You only think of the next meal. You don’t think of a future or the things you need to do to achieve it.

“I thought ‘kuch karna padega’ (I should do something),” he trailed off. 

He got into the Sports Authority of India in Bhopal and started training. Things went according to plan until they didn’t. Covid-19 struck India. Ram made his way back home. During the lockdown, food was hard to come by, money even harder. 

“Athletics is great when you make it, but until then there is a lot of uncertainty when you have not achieved anything,” says Ram. 

Ram joined his father as a manual labourer under MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). He ended up fixing roads, digging up ponds, running errands for politicians in the neighbourhood and all for Rs 300 a day. And while his legs got stronger, his will started to waver.

Luckily the curfew was lifted and Ram returned to training. His history as a marathoner was a good enough base to help him transform into a race-walker, but the months spent lifting the load of his family during Covid saw a spike in his performance.  

He picked up a silver medal in the men’s 50km event at the Race-Walking Championships in Ranchi in 2021, followed by a gold with a new National Record in the men’s 35km event at the Open Nationals a few months later.

A few other victories came his way, but it was the team bronze medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games last year in the 35 km race walk that cemented his position as a walker for the future with the Olympics around the corner. 

Baboo eventually decided to give up the team event and slipped into the individual 20 km event because ‘it doesn’t matter how good you are, if there are no other good athletes on your team, you will end up losing. Or if your team-mate is good, but if you are injured or you fall sick, the team loses because of you. It is a very stressful and team-dependent event and this makes me a little uncomfortable. That is why I want to shift to 20 km’. 

That turned out to be a good call because he managed to dip below the Olympic qualification mark of 1:20.10 a few days ago. He completed the race in 1:20.00 to join the likes of Vikash Singh, Paramjeet Singh Bisht, Akashdeep Singh, Suraj Panwar, Servin Sebastian and Ashpreet Singh as potentials for the Olympics in Paris. 

Every country is only allowed three athletes, including those from the women’s team who make the cut, for the event so Baboo isn’t guaranteed a spot yet. “Yeah… it’s tough to digest, but that’s the way it works. I have another event in Singapore in a couple of weeks and I hope to do well there. After that, we’ll see what happens. All I know to do is work. So far that’s the only thing which has helped me,” he says.