New Delhi: Praveen Kumar vividly remembers the annual sports day at Pragyan Public School, eight summers back. Then in Class 9, Praveen’s wish to compete in high jump had met stiff resistance from his school before his stubbornness prevailed.
Hailing from the town of Jewar in Uttar Pradesh and born with a congenital condition that resulted in a shorter and weaker left leg, Praveen faced denial at every stage of his life. Sport, he believed, would offer him a level playing field, but convincing the school authorities was a challenge he hadn’t seen coming.
“Noone really encouraged me back then. There was little knowledge and even lesser sensitisation. Some people mocked me, some pitied me, but no one supported me,” the 22-year-old recalled.
“And so, I became stubborn. It became my identity. That day changed my life. Had people been supportive, I would have become complacent, but rejections fired me up.”
Competing with able-bodied boys, Praveen won the gold medal, the first of the many laurels he would go on to accumulate in his promising career. Next up was a silver in a CBSE cluster competition followed by gold at the CBSE National School Games, all against able-bodied competitors.
Praveen moved to para athletics in 2018 when a coach at a district-level meet introduced him to Satyapal Singh, the renowned para-athletics coach who would go on to train him into a world beater.
Years later, with a World Championships bronze, an Asian Para Games gold, and two Paralympics medals — including a gold — to his name, Praveen will hope to add that one major medal missing from his cabinet.
“I want to be the world champion. To hold the Paralympics and world titles simultaneously will be special,” he said.
Praveen will compete in the T64 high jump event at the World Para Athletics Championships that begins this Saturday at Delhi’s JLN Stadium. This will be Praveen’s first international competition since his golden feat in Paris a year back where he cleared 2.08m, also an Asian record.
It will also be the first time Praveen’s family — still grieving from the loss of his uncle earlier this month — will be in the stands to watch him. “I am a little nervous. My family has never travelled to watch me live, and this has been a difficult time for us. My uncle passed away to cancer recently. I hope I give my family something to cheer about,” he said.
Besides medal hopes, bettering his personal best of 2.08m is high on Praveen’s agenda. “I want to do 2.10m. That will be a new Asian record and a new PB. Anything beyond that will be a bonus,” he said. The world record belongs to USA’s Jeff Skiba who jumped 2.11m in 2008.
The upcoming competition will be Praveen’s fourth World Championships. He first competed at this stage in 2019 at the age of 16 for a fourth-place finish in Dubai. Praveen followed it up with a bronze at the 2023 edition held in Paris and then finished fourth again in 2024 in Kobe, Japan.
“I have had a pretty underwhelming record at Worlds, but now is the opportunity to correct that. There’s no better place to do it than on home turf. The bigger goal, of course, is to retain my gold at the 2028 LA Paralympics,” he said.
