Hisar girl to represent nation in Tokyo paralympics

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, July 3

Asian gold medallist Ekta Bhyan, a resident of Hisar, is set to represent the country in the Tokyo paralympic games in category F51 of the club throw event.

Ekta, a resident of Urban Estate locality in Hisar, is serving as an HCS (allied) officer in Haryana. She ranks top in her category in Asia. She was selected after the trials in Delhi on Friday.

Vowing to keep up her form to win a gold, Ekta says that it has been her dream, like every athlete, to represent the country in the greatest show of sports on the Earth. “Hard work has transformed this wish into reality. Now, I am focused in the pursuit of a gold medal for the country,” she says.

After completing schooling, Ekta aspired to be a medical student and also joined the coaching class in Delhi. However, a mishap on August 4, 2003, involving a truck overturning on a vehicle she was travelling in near Kundli on the Delhi-Haryana border changed the course of her life.

While six other students were crushed to death, she suffered quadriplegic spinal cord injury and became wheelchair bound ever since.

Not losing hope, she resumed studies after spending several months in a hospital. She cracked the HCS examination after completing her graduation in 2013 and got herself posted as an assistant employment officer in Hisar.

Her father, Dr Baljeet Singh Bhyan, a horticulturist, has stood by the decision of Ekta when she decided to turn to sports. A late entrant in the sports, Ekta started practicing under Amit Saroha, an Arjuna awardee para-athlete, in Sonepat in 2014.

She later rose to emerge as the top ranked club thrower event and won the gold medal Asian Para Games in Jakarta.

In 2018, PM Narendra Modi lauded her emergence in para sports in his Mann Ki Baat radio programme and also wrote a letter terming her success ‘a shining story of human endeavour’.“You overcame trial and tribulations with grit and courage and made the tricolour fly high on an international stage. Although you were introduced to the sport at what many may consider at a later stage, you not only imbibed it in your life but also excelled in it,” the PM wrote to Ekta.