Not long after Sunil Jinabhai Joliya crossed the finish line of the men’s 3000m steeplechase race in first place at the National Games, he was wrapped in an embrace on the side of the track at Bambolim’s athletics stadium.
Joliya is the first track athlete from Gujarat, a state not particularly known for track and field achievements, to win a gold medal at the National Games.
Joliya crossed the finish line in eight minutes 37.15 seconds (8:37.15), a National Games record and also an improvement on his previous best of 8:39.18 he clocked to win the Indian U-23 title last month.
It’s also a time that makes him the eighth fastest Indian in this event. This list is headed by Asian Games champion Avinash Sable (personal best 8:11.20), but at just 20 years old, Joliya has many years to go to peak as a steeplechaser.
Joliya could have finished faster in Goa, but took his foot off the pedal.
As he stormed towards the finish line, he turned over his shoulder twice in the final straight before slowing down when he realised no one was near him. “I know I could have run maybe 1 or 2 seconds faster, but didn’t push myself in that last 100 metres,” he tells Sportstar.
Joliya will be an athlete to keep an eye on in the years to come and the bear hug he received next to the finish line came from someone who would have known of his potential for some time. It was V. Srinivasan, husband of P. T. Usha.
For Joliya, P. T. Usha will always be the person who plucked him out of obscurity and kickstarted his athletics career. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Usha, acknowledged as the greatest track athlete in Indian history, is a Rajya Sabha member and the president of the Indian Olympic Association. For Joliya, though, she will always be the person who plucked him out of obscurity and kickstarted his athletics career.
“After the race, the first person I got a call from was PT Usha ma’am. Later, I met her at her hotel. Wahi hamein gaon se le ke aye thhe (She was the one who got me here from a village). Otherwise, I don’t know where I would have been. Most likely, I would have been working in a field somewhere,” he says.
P.O. Dudhana number ek
There was no expectation of making a name or even a career in athletics where Joliya is from. He was born and raised in Dudhana, a village in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district. Incidentally, it is not the only Dudhana in the region.
“There are two other villages called Dudhana in Bhavnagar. My village is named Dudhana number ek (1) because it is the smallest,” Joliya says.
Life has always been hard for Joliya. He was only two years old when his father committed suicide. While he doesn’t know the cause, he suspects it had something to do with finances. Money has always been scarce. Joliya says the water in Dudhana is brackish, which means it’s hard to farm any time other than the monsoon season.
His family doesn’t have any land, but a longer spell of favourable farming conditions would have extended work opportunities. The family’s only source of income was the Rs 600 a month his mother got from the state’s pension for widows, and she made a small amount working as a field labourer.
Despite his modest upbringing, Joliya says he always wanted to be a sportsperson. He wasn’t certain, though, how to become one or which sport to play.
“We had a government school in our village and I played every sport. I really liked football but I would have been happy if I got the chance to play anything. I didn’t dream of anything big. My only hope was one day I could join a sports hostel where I would be able to play sports,” he says.
When he came in touch with a sports officer, he pestered him for information. “I would constantly call him. I’d say, ‘Sir, let me know if there is some opportunity to join a hostel.’”
When Joliya was 13 years old, he moved to a village near Porbandar to assist a cousin who worked as a farm caretaker. He grew onion, groundnut, pulses there. Still hoping to become an athlete, he would run barefoot on the road whenever he found the time.
That was the life he fully expected to make, when one night he got a call from the sports officer he had been pestering. The news was PT Usha had partnered with the Gujarat government to scout and train young athletes in the state and was conducting trials to select youngsters.
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Joliya only had the slightest idea of athletics but knew who Usha was. “When we were in school, we had read a story on Usha ma’am in our Gujarati textbook. I knew she was an udan pari (flying fairy) and a great athlete. I had seen her picture too. I was very excited when I heard she was starting a hostel,” he recalls.
In a day’s time, a trial was being conducted in five cities including Rajkot. The sports officer asked Joliya if he could make it. “I was so happy when I got that call. I must have been on the call for an hour. I was noting down everything I might need. I was prepared to go to all five cities to give the trial,” Joliya says.
Easier said than done. As he prepared to leave the next evening for Rajkot, Joliya found there were no state buses running to the city from his village.
“My cousin, his wife and their two children were with me. After waiting for a long time, we finally got a ride from a tempo that was carrying garbage. It was dirty and smelly and cold in the night but it took us to a bigger town from where got a bus to Rajkot,” he says.
Breakout race
Joliya reached Rajkot in the morning and only just made it to the competition venue. The 13-year-old hadn’t slept or eaten, and was stinking of garbage when he lined up barefoot alongside 50 other runners for an 800m race.
These were not his only disadvantages. “I had never run a competitive race before. I had no knowledge of what warming up was. I didn’t even know what 800m was. I just knew that we had to take two rounds of the field. That was probably the most important race of my life and I was running for the first time,” he says.
What he lacked in experience or training, he made up for in raw talent. Sprinting from start to finish, since he had no idea of how to pace himself, he finished by his estimation, about 50 metres ahead of the field.
Later, he finished first in the 300m race as well. The races finished, Joliya got to meet Usha for the first time. “I got an autograph with her, but my main concern was whether I would get to join her sports hostel.”
That call would come a few weeks later. The teenager was told to come to Vadodara for further trials.
“My mother wasn’t keen that I go because I was so young, and after the death of my father, she was afraid of losing me as well. I remember I even had a bit of a fight with her over this, but when it was time for me to go, she sent me with Rs 1,200 rupees she had saved,” he says.
Joliya was one of the 17 male athletes Usha picked to be a part of the first batch in her sports hostel. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
If he had aced the first round of trials, Joliya got a dose of reality when he met the 49 other winners from across the state at the second round.
“I had bought a pair of shoes for Rs 200 because I felt I was out of place running barefoot. I only spoke Gujarati and couldn’t really understand what the other boys were speaking. Also, many of them had come with some amount of training. In one of the races here, I only came 6th and was actually slower than one of the girls who had come to the camp,” he recalls.
Despite those modest results, Joliya was one of the 17 male athletes Usha picked to be a part of the first batch. “I later on asked Usha ma’am why she selected me when I wasn’t the fastest. She told me that they were looking for athletes who had the most margin for improvement.”
Back then though, Joliya was simply grateful. “I thought at that point that I had achieved my life’s goals. Later, I realised how much more there was to improve and my goals kept getting bigger.”
It was at Vadodara where Joliya began his formal career. “I learned everything there. How to exercise, how to weight train. Usha ma’am would come and guide us personally. She would check how much we were eating.
“When I started, I was a complete vegetarian but on her advice, I started eating non-vegetarian food so I could develop some power. I learned how to be a disciplined athlete. I learned how I could never give up in a race,” he says.
Long-term vision
“Madam (Usha) would say not to go looking for quick wins. She would tell us our target was for after 2020,” he recalls. But even as he prepared for the future, Joliya began racking up wins. In 2016, a year after he joined the academy, he won gold in the U-16 boys 600m at the National Inter District Junior Athletics Meet in Vishakaptnam.
His progress continued even though the Vadodara athletics academy shut down a year later. “Usha ma’am was very clear that I had to continue running. She said whatever happened, I shouldn’t quit. By this point, even I knew this is what I wanted to do in life. When our academy in Vadodara shut down, Usha ma’am made sure we got the chance to join other state academies to continue our careers. She stayed in touch with us. Even now, she calls me to find out how my training and career are progressing. She is such a senior person in the Rajya Sabha and the Indian Olympic Association, still someone I can call late at night if I am facing some problem,” he says.
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After the leg-up from Usha, Joliya has progressed steadily. After switching to the steeplechase event in 2019, Joliya has been part of the Indian team that competed in the Youth Asian Championships and also took part at the Junior World Championships in 2021.
Support from Sable, Parul
As his career progressed, Joliya began training with army coach Jaiveer Singh. Now, a part of the national camp, Joliya has been training with India’s top athletes.
“I am the youngest in the camp, so everyone is very helpful. Avinash (Sable) bhai always advises me on how to prepare. (Asian Games champion) Parul (Choudhary) ma’am is very supportive also. Before the Asian Games, she bought me a pair of running shoes worth Rs 25,000,” he says.
More than advice and shoes, the biggest bonus of being in the national camp is that the level of competition has helped him get faster. The rate of improvement has taken Joliya by surprise.
“This year, I was thinking I would run in the 8.50 range. I didn’t think I would run 8:37.15,” he admits. Having run this fast without even pushing himself at the finish line, Joliya knows he can get faster.
“I think my goal for next year is to run in the 8.30 range consistently. The qualification standard for the Paris Olympics is 8.15, which will be very hard to attain but in two years I want to be a contender at the Asian Championships and after that the 2028 Olympics,” says Joliya.
In the meantime, Joliya is hopeful his National Games gold could help him seal a job with the Indian Railways. “My mother and sister are still working as labourers in the village. Once I can get a job, I can make their lives easier.”
These are big dreams but Joliya believes he can do it. “I have started from nothing. If I wasn’t an athlete, I would probably be a labourer in some farm. I have already come so far, but have so much more to work for,” he says.
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