On August 14 last year, in a Frankfurt hotel room, India's cycling coach RK Sharma met with four nervous teenagers. They would soon be competing for the gold medal in the team sprint competition at cycling's junior world championships.
Their opponents in the final were Australia, a cycling powerhouse. To make matters worse, the team's star rider, Esow Alben, had injured his hand during practice. As spirits threatened to dip, Sharma - a former HR officer with the Indian Air Force (IAF) - spoke to his young team. "I told them to think of the date and the occasion. I reminded them that it was August 14. If they won, it would be Independence Day in India by the time they stepped on the podium. I said there are very few kinds of people who have the flag raised in their honour: The soldier, who's wrapped in the flag when killed in action, and the sportsperson who earns glory in a foreign land."
A few hours later, the national flag was indeed raised. The team, injury notwithstanding, became the first from India to claim a world championship medal at any level of cycling - and they set an Asian junior record too.
To see that Frankfurt success in perspective, here are some facts: Of the 60 medals at the 2020 World Championships, Asian teams won four. And India's performances in Asian cycling have yielded just one medal ever in the continental championships.
Few could believe what had just happened. "I get goosebumps when I think of it even today," grins Sharma. "The Australians were surprised. The British coach said no one back home could believe that India had won in track cycling, coming ahead of England and Germany. They had never seen Indians do anything like this. They had no idea this was possible," he recalls.
One person, though, did know this was possible: Sharma himself. "I'd maintained a diary on the team's preparation from 2016. I had written there exactly what time they would achieve to win gold. They did it in exactly the same time; I'd written 44.5 and 44.6 and they finished the race in 44.6," he says.
If this sounds like a crazy story, it's only in keeping with the crazier story of Rajendra Kumar Sharma and his love affair with cycling. Six years after he resigned from the IAF, self-funded his way through a coaching course in Switzerland and came back to India to coach in an unheralded sport, risking money and career, he'd achieved the first real step of his dream.
This sport isn't like cricket, where there is money to be made. I knew that, as a cycling coach, my monthly income would come down by half.
Sharma's wife and family thought he was crazy too, when he decided to do a coaching course at UCI - the world governing body in cycling - in Switzerland in 2013. "I was still in the IAF then. I had completed about 27 years of service and I was shortlisted for a promotion the following year. I can understand why my family wasn't so keen on it," he recalls.
Sharma, though, was certain this is what he wanted to do. His association with cycling had begun by chance in 1985, soon after he joined the Air Force, when a coach happened to see him pedaling furiously whilst rushing to report to his duty station in Bangalore. He'd eventually make it to the Services cycling team, for whom he'd win 9 national medals before retiring in 1998.
He had little contact with the sport for several years after that, barring cutting out cycling news from newspapers at the Air Force base library. It was only while posted in Delhi in 2006 that he re-engaged with the sport. "During that time, I started volunteering over the weekend with the local cycling federation. Around that time there were a lot of cycling road races that were being conducted and I'd mostly referee there," he recalls.
He knew, though, that what the country needed was coaching. "Refereeing is like the university level of an official's job, while cycling is like primary education. Considering the state of our country in cycling, I think it was more important that India had coaches than referees," he says.
It was clear to Sharma that he had to complete a course in coaching. He decided he would do so at the UCI in Lausanne. "From what I knew, that was the most prestigious course in the world," he says. The decision came with its tradeoffs, though. "I couldn't do the course while being with the Air Force, so I had to retire," he says.
There was also the question of financing the course. "The cycling federation [of India] was supportive, but they made it clear that they couldn't pay for anything. So I had to do that myself. It's a three-month course and it's expensive to stay in Switzerland for that long. I didn't have that kind of money so I had to sell my land to pay for it."
It was a risk, and one he was aware of. "This sport isn't like cricket, where there is money to be made. I knew that, as a cycling coach, my monthly income would come down by half. But I was ok with that."
Armed with that self-belief, Sharma went to Switzerland in 2013. While the course was for three months, he'd prepared for nearly two years. The course material required Sharma to plot out in detail the training procedures he would implement to take a cyclist from the junior national level to that of an Olympic athlete. "There's no way you could bluff any of this. I had to select a cyclist in India, who was on the UCI records. That way they could see if I was trying to bluff at any point. I'd been preparing the material for a couple of years at that point but I still barely slept during my course."
But it was worth it. "At the end of the course, my instructor told me my report was the amongst the best he had graded," says Sharma.
'Who is this Sharmaji? He's done a two-month course and he wants to tell us what to do'
Armed with his diploma, Sharma joined the national camp in India at the IG Stadium velodrome in New Delhi. He was called there by Omkar Singh, the chairman of the Cycling Federation of India (CFI), who had earlier encouraged him to do his UCI course in Switzerland. "We needed a fresh approach because what we had been doing until then wasn't working. When I picked him up, he was in active service. But he had a lot of knowledge about cycling and I had an intuition that he was what we needed," says Singh.
Built at a cost of Rs 150 crore for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the track had been shut for nearly two years post the CWG scandal. Visitors back then would have been greeted by the stench of urine and peeling paint. It would often flood in the monsoons. It was only in 2012 that the track was finally cleaned and opened for training.
And of course no one knew who he was. "No one was happy. 'Who is this Sharmaji? He's done a two-month course and he wants to tell us what to do'," he recalls.
He didn't fare much better with his wards. Though the national championships were only a few months away, almost all cyclists chose to return home rather than train under him. "Apna career thodi kharab karna hai, (why would we want to spoil our career), they thought. Of the four who stayed back, Deborah Herold was from the Andamans, and the others - Vikram Singh, Vidyalakshmi and Manorama Devi-were from Manipur. They only stayed back in the IG Stadium because there home was so far away."
That didn't deter Sharma. "I only had two months with them but, in that time, I completely reworked their training routine. Some players needed work on their endurance and others on their power. At the nationals, every one of them won gold with a national record. At the next national camp, I had a full crowd of people who wanted to train with me."
For all that success, Sharma still found himself having to fight for his vision. "At the start of the next year, I came up with my plan to medal at the 2015 Asian Championships. Everyone laughed... They didn't even want to believe that we could win a medal there. They didn't even consider it," he says.
He refused to compromise with his belief. That required him picking fights with most other coaches and cyclists. "There were enough people who asked, 'Who is this guy who doesn't have a diploma from NIS who is coming to tell us how to do things.' As if NIS is IIT Delhi! They couldn't intimidate me. If they had studied so much, why did India still not have a result to talk about? A lot of coaching in India happens like a mafia, that only they know how to run things.
"I'm not from NIS. I come from an army background. I take the decision that's in the best national interests. It made me out to be the bad guy and even today a lot of people think I'm the most wanted villain in the system," Sharma says.
While Sharma now has a world gold medal to make his point, he himself wonders how he got as long a leash as he did to run things his way. "It took all of 2014 and most of 2015 to get things in order. The federation really supported me. They backed me when I needed it. Perhaps they felt sorry for me that I had spent so much of my money to do a course outside the country," he says.
"You can't tell him to curb his aggressive approach," CFI chairman Singh says, explaining why they backed him despite his abrasive personality. "That is paying results. I want results. I don't see any reason to tell him don't do this or that. He has to listen to us on policy matters, but when it comes to coaching decisions, it is entirely his call. No doubt about it."
Most controversial was his decision to, in his words, 'remove the kachra (rubbish)' from the camp. "There were cyclists who had been in the camp for four or five years without doing anything. They had no plans or desire to achieve anything at an international level. I'd spent enough time with them to know their motivation and ambition. I knew if India had to achieve something it couldn't be with them. When I say training starts at 10-30 a.m., I can't have people arriving at 10-45 and chatting for another 15 minutes before starting at 11. But that's a difficult habit to change, if you have always had it.
"A lot of coaching in India happens like a mafia, that only they know how to run things." RK Sharma
"There were some who were drug users, others had settled into mediocrity. Bahut hungama ho gaya tha (They made a lot of fuss). Some of them had been national champion for many years. But I said, there's no point being a national champion if you can't finish in the top 10 of the Asian Championships," he says.
India's problem, Sharma felt, had never been about not having good enough athletes. Instead he places the blame on his own fraternity. "I remember even when I was a cyclist, everyone did exactly the same training. That hadn't changed even when I came back as a coach. There has never been any sort of specialized training in cycling in India. If we treat horses and donkeys the same, neither will benefit. You have to make a horse into a racehorse," he says.
He's adamant the solution doesn't lie in bringing in foreign coaches. "What is the point of running a coaching institute if you finally have to bring in a foreign coach? How many foreign coaches do you see running basketball in the USA? Unfortunately in India we have a habit of seeing white skin and getting mesmerized," he says.
This isn't to say that foreign coaches haven't been considered in cycling. "There were times when, the federation was asked whether we needed a foreign coach," he admits.
Omkar Singh though preferred backing his own coach over a foreigner. His reasoning was simple. "A good foreign coach will never come to India in cycling. Our ranking was 150th out of 195 countries. How could one be sure, that in four years, they could raise the standard of India from 150 to the top. They would try their method for three or four years, earn their money and go back. Foreign coaches would not institute any long term changes," he says. .
If we treat horses and donkeys the same, neither will benefit. You have to make a horse into a racehorse.
Sharma's first priority was getting the kind of athletes he wanted. In 2015, the CFI began inducting trainees with no background in cycling but who met certain physical requirements. "We had seen what those with a cycling background could do. Hume bus chingari de do, aag bana denge. (Give us a spark and we can make a fire out of it) But if we already got a burning piece, it will only become ash," he says.
They conducted basic trials, testing them on sprints and jumps. A few were brought to Delhi and trained on the cycle for a week before trials on the track.
And so India's most promising cyclists came from diverse backgrounds, united only by their lack of familiarity prior to joining the cycling camp, with the cycle. Esow, now the country's top cyclist and world's best junior, was a rower in Port Blair. Of his teammates who won the sprint gold, Keithellakpam Jemsh Singh, 19, was a volleyball player, Yanglem Rojit Singh aspired to be a footballer while Ronaldo Singh wanted to take up water sport.
This policy is now considered one of the most significant ones in the sport. "The game changer was this grassroots talent identification program. We lacked the long term policy. Earlier we'd have players come in on their own. If they had been long term cyclists, they usually had a mishmash of training. They had one coach in school, another in college and then a third when they came to the national camp. There was no structure," says Singh.
Sharma and his athletes replied with results. "When I promised that our athletes would win a gold medal at the junior Asian Championships, I had people say they'd quit coaching if that happened. Then at the 2018 tournament we won both the team sprint and keirin gold and also set a record in the sprint. The following year in Jakarta, we won all the four track cycling races and broke the team sprint record again," he says. And then of course was the groundbreaking World gold.
That win wasn't just a lucky day. As mentioned earlier, India didn't have much cycling pedigree by way of international medals - but it did have recent achievements. At the time of Frankfurt, they were the top-ranked team in men's junior sprint. Esow was the top-ranked junior cyclist in individual sprint and keirin events, with his teammate, Ronaldo, not very far behind at number 3.
This might have come as a surprise to many rivals but for Sharma this was entirely to plan. "There are no miracles in sport. We didn't just shoot out of nowhere. Our training has been systematic and regular," he says. As a consequence, there has been less talk about bringing in a foreign coach. That, Sharma says, is one of his finest achievements. "It's a matter of pride for me that India achieved its first cycling gold medal with an entirely Indian run programme."
Sharma is the first to admit he isn't perhaps the most knowledgeable coach in the industry but he believes he makes up for it with a willingness to learn and target increasingly challenging goals. "My simplification of what coaching is: you have a visionary thought and then you have to take the athlete to that place. It sounds simple but you end up breaking your head in creating the plan. You have to do a lot of planning. You have a thousand things to consider. When I left the Air Force, I didn't know the ABC of coaching. But I had a vision that kept growing as the kids developed. As they got better, even I had to keep learning and improving."
It's too early to say if Sharma and his young team's achievement will usher in long-term success or whether cycling will, like so many stories in Indian sport, fizzle away for reasons not always in their control. Indeed the cycling programme has taken a bit of a beating because they have been unable to train for nearly five months owing to the restrictions the government introduced to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Sharma's factoring this in as well. His athletes were too young to have a decent shot at the senior competitions this year or even for the postponed Olympics. Their time will come, says Sharma, at the 2024 Olympics. "The goal for this year was for Ronaldo to win a gold medal in the team sprint competition at the junior Worlds. Then he could perhaps try for a gold at the senior Asian championships. That hasn't happened and compared to a lot of other teams, our preparation has suffered," Sharma admits.
A dip in performances might only see some of his naysayers sharpen their knives but Sharma would have it no other way. "There is a saying that I like. At the start, people try to pull you down by your legs. But if you rise a little bit, they have to stretch to pull you down. If you rise even more, they have to start rising themselves if they want to continue pulling you down. Eventually they will put their hands together and say what a great person you are."