 "Lalit Kumar, Ravi Dahiya coach")
When injury interrupts an athlete’s dream run, it takes grit to bounce back. Lalit Kumar did that: A knee injury he ignored to treat ended his career as a wrestler. Lalit became a coach and after 12 years of training champions, he is a nominee for this year’s Dronacharya Award.
As he waits to know if he will win India’s greatest honour in sports coaching, Lalit remembered his last interview with 'Business Standard' when he and one of his wards, Olympic silver medallist Ravi Dahiya, featured in a video before the Commonwealth Games 2022.
Lalit is at the Chhatrasal Academy, Delhi’s wrestling coaching hub where drills start at 4:30 am. “In winter by 5 am and in summer by 4.30 am, I am at the akhara in Chhatrasal, no matter what the weather is like. It is a non-negotiable for me,” says Lalit, 45, the head coach at the Chhatrasal Academy.
"I put in a five-hour shift with the wrestlers in the morning and do official work thereafter, till I return to the [wrestling] mat at 3 in the evening for five more hours," he says, adding he is on the payrolls of the Delhi government and has to be in an office as part of that responsibility.
A hands-on coach, Lalit never shouts instructions from the sidelines during his ward's bouts. Just like he waits for the match to finish to let his players know their mistakes, he has waited as a silent worker to get his due as a coach.
A hands-on coach, Lalit never shouts instructions from the sidelines during his ward's bouts. Just like he waits for the match to finish to let his players know their mistakes, he has waited as a silent worker to get his due as a coach.
His focus on coaching means he is away from his small family which includes his wife and a daughter, for days. He was touring with young wrestlers in March this year when his daughter hurt herself while trimming grass and lost a finger. They had gone to their village in Delhi. “I was away and could do nothing literally. I felt bad but then I rang some phones and got her other finger fixed. Still, she lost a finger,” says Lalit in a shaky voice.
But was it always about coaching for Lalit? Other recipients of the Dronacharya Award in wrestling have mostly been former players-turned-coaches like Satpal Maharaj or Yashvir Singh, the last Chhhatrasal Academy alumnus to get the honour.
‘Knee that never listened’
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“The knee never listened to me,” he says. His father and uncle were professional wrestlers, so Lalit wanted to be one too.
“My father got a bank job and so he left wrestling. But my tau ji (uncle) continued to coach players at the Railways and the Lala Ram Vyamshala [a sports training institute in Delhi]. I too started from the Vyamshala itself and went on to play at the national and university level,” says Lalit. Playing in 63-kg and 68-kg wrestling categories in Delhi, Lalit won medals at the national and university games in the 90s. (The two categories have been discontinued.)
“But I dislocated my knee more often than I should have. In the nineties, operation was a dreaded word and for players, it was more so as they said it would end careers. Mine though was ended by the lack of it,” says Lalit, ruing his decision not to get surgery.
As Lalit’s career as a wrestler was about to end, his uncle became a guiding light. “Since my other brothers were already doing well in fields other than sports, there was still an urge to keep myself associated with the game and keep the family legacy going,” remembers Lalit. “It was at that point that tau ji asked me to get a coaching certificate from the National Institute of Sports (NIS) in Patiala. Coaching was the only way I could still stay attached with the love of my life,” he added.
After getting a diploma from NIS, Lalit worked in Bulandshahar as a Uttar Pradesh government-contracted coach before returning to his uncle’s akhara at Lala Ram Vyamshala in Delhi. A job with the Delhi government as a coach followed soon and Lalit joined the Singhu Sports Complex in 2010. He was sent to Chhatrasal in 2012 and has been there since then.
It is his deep involvement in the lives of his wards that gives Lalit the confidence that they will win at least three medals for India at the Paris Olympics in 2024.
“We are trying and I would say that at least 2-3 medals at this Olympics will be from our academy. We have heavy competition in 57 kg with Aman (Sehrawat, Asian Games 2023 bronze medallist) and Ravi (Dahiya, Olympics 2020 silver) and then in 86 kg, we have Deepak Punia (Junior World Championship and Asian Games silver medalist). Another one could be surprise pick Vishal Kaliraman, who was the winner of the 65 kg national trials for Asian Games 2023 and will challenge Bajarang (Punia, Olympic, World Championship and Asian Games medalist) for a place in the Olympics.”
As he names wrestlers who could win medals at the Olympics, Lalit spoke about Kaliraman, Aniruddh Kumar, Deepak Kumar (no relation to Punia) and Sumit Malik. “We identify the young talents and the weight in which they can excel. They are trained in a way that they can punch above their weight at the world and Olympics level,” says Lalit about how they prepare the budding wrestlers coming from the villages of not Just Delhi, Haryana and UP, but all around India now.
'Coach Saab'
Lalit has been nominated for the Dronacharya Award twice before and acknowledges the expectations from him if he wins this time. “People might feel that Coach Saab will get complacent after the award. But it is not like that as I have more responsibility on my shoulders now. Chhatrasal, after getting continuous medals not only at the senior level but at junior and sub-junior in the world, is always a part of discussions in the wrestling fraternity. Thus to maintain its reputation, I need to work even more,” he says.
Much like other awards such as the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna and Arjuna, the Dronacharya is also given by the central government. It is given to coaches based on the medals won by the trainees under them. A coach applies and then the state government, National Sports Federations, the Indian Olympic Association and the Sports Authority of India (SAI) nominate his or her name to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MYAS) which decides who shall get the award on August 29, the National Sports Day every year.
Lalit would be the first in 12 years from Chhatrasal to get this award. “I am the most senior coach here, not in age but in experience. Ever since Ravi (Dahiya) won the silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, everybody said that Chhatrasal should get the Dronacharya award now. I applied two times before but was not lucky enough. This time, maybe because Deepak and Aman won medals at the Asian Games 2023 as well, the government (Of NCT of Delhi) thought that I was worthy enough and nominated me,” says Lalit.
