CHENNAI: Every Commonwealth Games ends with a medal table – which is often just numbers, rankings and countries’ sporting progress. But very seldom do they paint the actual story, which made me wonder after the Glasgow games, what it actually takes for the person to get to the podium in the first place.
Take Sharmila Dhankar. She contracted polio at the age of two in a home in Haryana, and grew up in a body that already had to work harder than other athletes in her field. She was married young into a relationship, which turned abusive, and had walked away from it with two daughters and very little else. Motivation was farthest on her list, but slowly yet steadily, she built a life from there, and only after she remarried did she pick up shot put for the first time at the suggestion of her husband. She was 34.
At 40, in Glasgow, she threw her way into history, winning India’s first-ever Commonwealth Games gold in para-athletics. This isn’t just a comeback story; it is proof that a person can genuinely become someone new after hardship, and not just mend themselves from where they were before. In my field, we sometimes call this post-traumatic growth. Sharmila’s story insists that self-belief has no expiry date.
Then there is 22-year-old Gyaneshwari Yadav, who walked onto the weightlifting platform in the women’s 53kg category carrying something most spectators would never think to ask about. It was the first day of her period, and physically one of the harder days of the month for many women athletes to perform on.
She lifted 199 kilograms, won silver, and broke two national records, only mentioning afterwards that she hadn’t known how her body would respond that morning. What strikes me here is what psychologists call ‘Locus of control’ – the simple, difficult discipline of accepting what you cannot control and directing everything you have toward what you still can.
Asmita Dey’s story is harder to sit with, and probably has its importance and value because of that. Her father repaired bicycles for a living in Tripura, earning roughly Rs 300 a day, and he believed in her judo career before anyone else did. He passed away suddenly in December. In her own words, it felt as though her dream had ended with him.
Five different sports, five different battles but one thing becomes hard to ignore in all of those stories: for every one of these athletes, the medal was rarely the hardest thing they did that year, it was all the battles before
Seven months later, in the women’s 48kg final in Glasgow, she won India’s first-ever CWG judo gold and dedicated it to him immediately. Asmita didn’t merely wait for her grief to end; she carried it forward with her onto the mat – which is closer to how healing actually tends to happen.
Before Sakshi Chaudhary even reached Glasgow, she had to fight her way past two of India’s most decorated boxers – Nikhat Zareen and Minakshi Hooda – just to make the team. If that wasn’t enough, she had in front of her an opponent, unbeaten in sixty-eight fights. She won, but the story is far more than just the score; it reveals composure and the discipline of fighting the person in front, not the reputation.
And then there is Mirabai Chanu, who needs little introduction, winning her third consecutive Commonwealth Games gold. Winning once can be carried by adrenaline. Winning three times, years apart, requires something quieter, a motivation that survives long after the fear of losing has faded.
—The author is a Sports & Exercise Psychologist