He lost his right hand in an electric short circuit mishap at the age of three. But not the hope to make it big in life and as it turned out, the 20-year-old U. Mohan Harsha is now the toast of former All England champion P. Gopichand and the SAI athletics coach N. Ramesh who identify young talent and groom it through the Gopi-Mytrah Foundation.
Reason? Harsha bagged a highly creditable silver in the 100m (T47 category) of the Dubai World Para Athletics Grand Prix with a timing of 11.26s in Dubai on Tuesday.
For the record, the gold medallist from Indonesia Nur Ferry Pradana clocked 11.12s.
“I believe that sports gives these para athletes their own identity, rather than being identified just as one of the specially challenged individuals. The best example being para shuttler and former world champion Manasi Joshi,” was Gopi’s concept.
Interestingly, it was the initiative of coach Nagaraju, who first spotted Tirupati-based Harsha in the Kendriya Vidyalaya Cluster athletics meet and convinced his parents to visit Gachibowli once, without actually telling them the exact ‘motive’ behind that invite.
“Yes, they were not aware why they were called to visit the sports complex along with their son. But, once they were convinced their son’s future would be better off with specialised training, they decided to leave him in Hyderabad under our mentorship,” Ramesh informed Sportstar.
“Since I believed he had the speed, the focus was on sprints. And, luckily Harsha was a never-say-no talent to hours of training despite the major handicap,” the SAI coach said.
Harsha won the last Senior National gold in the same event (which helped him to qualify for the Dubai World meet) and sponsors too started chipping in like Colgate which is giving him monthly scholarship and the Gopi-Mytrah Foundation taking care of diet, training and boarding expenses .
“I told Harsha that once you are on the track, you are like any other normal athlete for me. And you also never think that you are a specially challenged one,” was Ramesh’s mantra to him. And, to the master’s delight, Harsha, a product of the Pay & Play Scheme of SAI Sports Training Centre (Hyderabad) and now representing Telangana, is dreaming big – to win a medal in the Paralympics.
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