Edutainment
Deepak Lather’s Journey From Fields to Championship
At an age when being the centre of attraction is of utmost importance… this 15YO Haryana boy is busy breaking international records.
At an age when being the centre of attraction is of utmost importance, flaunting the best of styles is all the youth dreams of, and going on fancy dates seems like long unfulfilled desire … this 15YO Haryana boy is busy breaking international records.
Deepak Lather, farmer’s son from a small village in Haryana, Shadipur, is India’s youngest weightlifter with a national record. The young lad has also proved his mettle on world level by winning the gold medal in 5th Commonwealth Youth Games, lifting a total of 258kg with 120kg in snatch and 138 in clean jerk lift.
As per the facts, Deepak is the first record holder, “After the world weightlifting federation (IWF) changed the categories, the Indian weightlifting federation came up with 125kg as the Indian standard for the 62kg class. No one could be considered the record holder until he lifted that mark. But for the eight years since the Indian standard was decided, no one could,” explains Pal Singh Sandhu, chief referee at the nationals.
But was it his dream to be a weight lifter or destiny’s game that brought him here? Well! Destiny definitely played its part to some extent as is evident from what his father said, “I thought he should be a wrestler because he was always quite strong. Even when he was young he would pick up sacks of cut-fodder on his back. Those sacks were as heavy as he was. When he was about nine his mother was feeling tired, so he carried her from the field home.”
“He will squeeze someone’s hand really hard and then apologise. He doesn’t know his own strength,” he added.
With Shadipur not having a gym, weightlifting seemed a far fetched approach, but it seems God had some different plans for him. Army Sports Institute conducted trials across the state in late 2008. “Some 20 of us were chosen on our ability to run races of hundred meters, four hundred meters, one kilometre and also our standing in long jump and broad jump,” says the winner himself.
Talking further about his journey he said, “I first trained as a diver. But I didn’t enjoy it and after three months they decided to reassign me to weightlifting.”
“I only got in because our foreign coach Juraj Gubala was not looking for experienced weightlifters but rather boys who had just started the sport, so he could teach them the technique from the start,” he added.
Coach Vijay Sharma describes his snatch lift as one of the finest in the country but it wasn’t easy for Deepak to learn this technique, for the first few months he would just use a wooden stick to mimic a bar for the initial few months. “Deepak’s advantage is that he started quite young, so his technique is perfect. He will get stronger as he gets older, but once your technique is set, it is difficult to modify it,” says Sharma.
While he was gifted with special talents, he thought his future lies in the fields. “I went to the fields along with my father. I cut weeds, ploughed the field and then gathered the crop in April. I thought that was my future also,” he says.
The young achiever who loves his mobile phone is all set to leave it aside to prepare for World Championships in 2017. “I’m going to leave this phone behind at my village and take a simple one, just to make calls with. It’s going to be hard but I can’t have any distractions. In two years, I want to be someone who can compete at the World Championships in 2017 and, perhaps, even the 2020 Olympics. My phone was fun for me right now but now I need to grow up,” he says.
Team ScooNews wishes him all the best for his future endeavors.
Kudos to the fighter!
Credits: indianexpress.com