*1.45.77*
Remember the newspaper headlines "Shri rams into the final "
Honorary Captain Sriram Singh Shekhawat ,VSM (born 14 November 1948 in Badnagar, Rajasthan) is one of the greatest middle distance runner (800m) of ASIA from India. He won many medals for India in his career like Silver in 1970 Asian Games held at Bangkok, Gold in 1974 Asian Games held at Tehran & 1978 Asian Games held at Bangkok, Thailand.
His best run was 1:45.77 in 800m in 1976 Montreal Olympics, where he finished 7th.
That race resulted in a World Record.
His medals tally:-
Asian Games - 2 Gold Medals at 1974 Tehran and 1978 Bangkok Games in 800 M Men’s event.
3 Silver Medals in 800 M at Bangkok in 1970 ,at Bangkok 1978 and Tehran 1974 in 4×400 M Relay.
Asian Athletics Championships - 3 Gold Medals and 1 Silver Medal.
For about 25 years, no Asian could better than time. Possibly no Indian can...
Only 4 Indian Athletes have reached the track finals, Milkha Sir, Gurbachan Singh Randhawa Sir, PT Usha Madam and Sriram Sahab.
Sriram Shekhawat Ji was born on 14 November 1948 in Badnagar city, Jaipur Rajasthan. Growing up in the scorching heat of Rajasthan, Shekhawat Saab’s schooling and college also happened there in Badnagar.
That period was a period of tension with the neighboring countries (Pak-China). That is why the youth of that time and especially the boys from the small towns & Villages used to dream of joining the army for the security of the country and they used to train hard, putting in their blood-tears and sweat to get selected.
And Shekhawat sahib was good at sports from the beginning, so he also saw the same dream & worked hard for it then at the age of 20, he joined the Indian Army.
Honorary Captain Sriram Singh Shekhawat joined 17th Battalion of Prestigious Rajputana Rifles (SawaiMan Guards) in 1968.
At that time the Indian Army was giving the highest number of athletes in the country, Shekhawat sahib was one of the fastest runners in his troop. That is why he got selected, and initially, he used to participate in every running event i.e. 100m, 200m, and 400m.
Who was Sriram Singh’s mentor & what he changed for him?
during that period of training at National Stadium and Rajputana Rifles Stadium, Delhi cantt. he came under the influence of the Coach Mohammed Ilyas Babar Sir Coach Babar Sir persuaded him to shift his focus from 400 meters to 800 meters.
Initially, he also found this idea strange. But soon he got complete confidence in his guru’s decision and he became the best runner of the Rajputana Rifles.
‘The letters’ to the ministry:
Seeing his hard work during the training, Babar Saheb wrote a letter to the Ministry of sports in Delhi, in which he said about Sriram Shekhawat that ‘If this boy gets some world-class training, then he can do wonders for India. But his letter was ignored.
One of his training runs was like this :
Warm up jog of 3.2 km or 6.5 Km from National Stadium to Rashtrapati Bhavan and back under Coach Bhatia ji and Coach Dogra ji.
100 repeats of 100 m at 80% effort on India Gate lawns, and 100 m jog walk for recovery.
One Press wallah, told Coach Babar Sahab “Ab aapka ladka mar gaya!” (You have overtrained him.)
A bet was made, if he can run 100 m in less than 11 sec, and Sahab ran in 10.7 sec..
A description by Jaikishan Desai :
”You would know this well Norris. In the monsoon season when the track was flooded, like others Tarlok Singh used to send me up Rajpath to that last hill leading up to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Some days I was to do 10, some days 15. His instructions were to run up the hill hard and jog down and then go again. He didn't say how hard, and it being offseason, hard was not particularly hard so I did what others did, and strode up the hill and jogged back down. That was till I saw Sriram Singh do those hills one day. Babar Sahab must have sent him to do that workout and when I saw him bound up that hill fast I realized that was how the hill was supposed to be run. I never did that workout the same way again. What a beautiful runner he was! The only one I saw remotely close to his form was the 400m runner Thyagarajan (Thambi). His feet barely touched the ground.”
Sriram Singh Shekhawat’s International journey & Challenges:
After training for some 2 years, the opportunity came in 1970 when Shekhawat Sahab went to the “Bangkok Asian Games” to represent India at the international level. In the 1970 Asian Games in Bangkok, he was beaten to the second place in the 800 meters by Jimmy Crampton of Burma.
Here 2 big challenges came in front of him.
The first one was that he had never run on synthetic tracks before this. And second, was that he didn’t have a world-class running kit. But still, he did wonders with whatever he had.
In his first international race, he finished second and brought a silver medal.
But the biggest test was yet to come, people’s hopes were being tied to this young man to bring a gold medal in the Olympics, and with this baggage, he reached to participate in the 1972 “Munich Olympics”.
Mind you that till this time the Government of India had not made any special facility for any athlete in India. They were all by themselves mostly.
Sriram Sahab would have won this race had been..
Shekhawat Saab ran very well in the 1972 Olympics but could not cross the qualifying rounds of HITTS, but still, he made a new Asian record. He returned from there with the happiness of the record but not the medal.
Singh was eliminated in the heats of the Munich Olympics in 1972 but his time of 1:47.7 bettered Crampton’s Asian record.
He later won 800m Silver medal in 1973 Asian Athletics Championships.
In the year 1973, he was awarded the prestigious Arjuna Award, as recognition to his extraordinary achievements in Athletics.
He improved his time to 1:47.6 to win the gold in the 1974 Asian Games.
He aldo won 3 Gold medals for 400 m, 800 m and 4×400 m relay in 1975 Asian Athletics Championships.
In the year 1975, he was awarded the prestigious civil award of Padma Shri as recognition to his contribution to the field of sport.
And along with his old coach, Elias Babar, he started the preparations for the ‘1976 Montreal Olympics’ in the national sports academy in Patiala.
This 1976’s Olympics was going to be the best for his carrier.
The Montreal saga: The high point of Sriram Singh’s career was the 800m race in 1976 Montreal Olympics.
With the spirit of victory in 1976, Shekhawat sahib reached Montreal, but this time his problems were not over. In India, he used to practice day and night on tracks made of sand but as soon as he had to compete at the international level, the racing tracks looked unknown & unfriendly to him because they were made of synthetic rubber!
And perhaps you will not agree but you must also understand how important it is for an athlete to have a ‘good training staff’ and a physio but Shekhawat Saab was accompanied only by his coach.
The qualifying round, the semifinal and the final were run on successive days.
In the first race, he broke his own Asian record with a time of 1:45.86[ In the semifinal, he came second in a time of 1:46.40]
The race for the semifinals was also very exciting. At that time a new rule was included that every player must run in his lane for 300 meters at the start of the race.
Like the rest of the players, Shekhawat Saab did not panic about this thing but he gave his best and got 4th place in that race, and became the third player from India who made it to the Olympic final.
A famous anecdote about his semifinal race:
Shekhawat Sahab, who was maintaining the 5th position throughout that race, was defeated by ‘James Robinson of America in the last 5 meters, and when both of them reached the finishing line.
Everyone thought that James might have won, but when the footage was checked, Shekhawat sahib had won by the 10th part of a second and reached the final.
Before him, Milkha Singh in the ‘1960 Rome Olympics and Gurbachan Singh Randhawa in the ‘1964 Tokyo Olympics’ have reached the finals.
Why couldn’t Sriram Singh Shekhawat win the medal?
And as we told you, the lack of resources started dominating this legendary athlete. After putting his best in the semifinals, the next day was the finals, but his body was torn in pain.
He tells that when he used to go to take a shower, he would massage himself inside and he had to take care of the meals on his own.
So on the morning of the final, he caught a fever but he did not want to back down and was determined that he would run with all his willpower when the race started, he ran like a bullet for the first 500 meters of the race, everyone else was far behind him but slowly his fatigue started to show.
And the world champion of that time named ‘Alberto Huatorina of Cuba trailed him and which later help him set a new world record.
When Alberto, was asked what he was thinking? He ran to Sriram Shekhawat Ji and said “this man inspired me to run that fast. I thought he is going to win so I increased my speed.”
In the final, Singh made a huge rush from the break at 300 meters to take lead at the bell with a time of 50.85 ahead of Cuban Alberto Juantorena’s 50.90. Juantorena caught up with him around the 550m mark and won in a world record time of 1:43.50. Singh faded away in the home straight to finish seventh with a time of 1:45.77.
See his race on Youtube, Lane 6..
Shekhawat sahib came in the 7th position in that final race. But that day a new chapter of sportsmen’s spirit was written in the history of the Olympics as His timing was stupendous… given the exposure & support to Indian athletes at that time…
Sriram Singh’s time 1:45.77 stood as the Asian record until it was broken by Lee Jin-il in 1994 and it stood as a national record for 42 years until it was broken by Jinson Johnson in June 2018.
He retained his 800 m gold medal in the 1978 Asian Games (1:48.80), but was eliminated in the heats of the same event in the 1980 Moscow Olympics
and in 1980 said goodbye to his golden carrier.
Even after that, he remained associated with the sports field and continued to serve as a coach in the sports authority of India (SAI).
As Olympian Captain Sriram Singh Shekhawat Ji after retirement as Honorary Captain from the Army took the job of a coach with the Sports Authority of India. He in a short time was able to demonstrate splendid credentials for himself. Some of his famous trainees are Geeta Zutshi, Shiny Abraham, Vandana Rao and Vandana Shanbhag among others. For three Asian Games, he has also trained and coached the Indian Team in the middle-distance.
Honorary Capatain Sriram Singh Shekhawat Ji is the Chairman of Simla Youngs FC.He helped build a Youth Infrastructure for Football via Simla Youngs since 2000.
(That time, when organisation wanted to put India in the World Cup in 2010..)see Facebook - simlayoungs1936, www.simlayoungs.com
It is not as if legends have stopped emerging from these games, legends were coming even then and are coming even now. We just have to look at this untold story of legend, "that might have won not just 2 Olympic gold medals, if they had gotten little support from..
It is sad though that not many people will even know his name. Who with so little exposure, understanding and money in those times and yet he fought like a lion. Lots has changed in Indian sport and while we celebrate how much we have progressed, the Srirams of Indian sport should never be forgotten.
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