“No senior athlete likes to lose to a kid,” jokes Ajith Markose, coach of Sajeesh Joseph (right in pic) who finished first. Indeed with 120m to go, Beant (left) had to run around his rivals rather than run the quickest route to the finish.

Like many young runners, Beant Singh too has athletes who he looks up to for inspiration. In his small rented room in Delhi’s Kotla Mubarakpur, the youngster has put up posters of the usual suspects – the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt, Olympic 800 metres champion David Rudisha and more recently Nijel Amos, the winner of the half-mile at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. But young Beant has yet another poster in his room and while it it isn’t of a runner it’s of someone who has had far more of an impact on his career.

The image is of double Olympic medalist wrestler Sushil Kumar.

Beant says that but for Sushil, it was unlikely he would have started his career as a runner. Certainly Monday’s result would have been unthinkable. At the National Open Championships at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Beant, who hasn’t yet turned 16, won silver – his first senior national medal – in the 800m. Beant finished with a time of 1:51:08 which was a new national record in the youth category and better even than the gold medal winning timing at this year’s Asian Junior Championships – a competition for runners upto four years older.

Beant indeed was targetting a sub one-minute-50-second timing but was stymied after getting boxed in by his senior competitors.

“No senior athlete likes to lose to a kid,” jokes Ajith Markose, coach of Sajeesh Joseph — who finished first. Indeed with 120m to go, Beant had to run around his rivals rather than run the quickest route to the finish. That, however, took little away from his performance. “At his age to run such a quick race is extraordinary. It is a world level performance,” says Markose.

Sushil and Beant’s paths first crossed in 2011 in the village of Mardan Khera, about 200km from Delhi, in Haryana. Beant’s family is from the village where Diwan Singh, Sushil’s father, had bought land shortly before his son’s Olympic bronze winning effort in 2008. Beant, by his own admission, had no knowledge of sports as a career back then. While he knew Sushil was an important person, he rarely interacted with him. Things changed in 2011 when Beant’s father Gurwinder, worried about his son’s skinny frame, asked Diwan for advice.

“I was very thin as a child. My father was trying to find a way for me to put on some weight. Diwan sir spoke to Sushil and he suggested that I spend my summer vactions in the Chhatrasal stadium with the wrestlers. There wasn’t any expectation that I would become a wrestler, I was simply to go and enjoy myself and put on some weight as well,” recalls Beant.

Fun and games

Beant says Sushil simply told him to have fun and figure out what he wanted to do. And while the wrestler himself was training at the Sonepat Wrestling Center, he let Beant stay in his hostel room at Chhatrasal. Beant says while he wrestled for fun with the other hostelers, his attention switched to running. He began training at the Chhattrasal Stadium under coach Sunita Rai and proved to be a natural. Within a couple of months he had won his first race at the Delhi state championships.

By then Beant’s abilities had caught the eye of Dinesh Rawat, a silver medalist from the Bangkok Asian Games in the 400m and now a coach. “Beant is a natural. But most importantly, he never seems to tire or be afraid while training,” says Rawat. And while Beant says he put on some weight on a wrestler’s diet, Rawat says his reed-like frame – Beant stands 5’7” while weighing 52kg — was an additional benefit. The decision to train with Rawat and away from the Chhatrasal stadium wasn’t made lightly. Beant says it was only after Sushil spoke to Sunita and was told of Rawat’s pedigree that he agreed to let Beant move out of the Chhatrasal complex.

While Beant continued performing at the youth levels it was only this year at the Federation Cup in Patiala, that he first came into the reckoning. It was a race in which Beant’s name had to be manually entered for the race for the software didn’t permit entrants below 16 years of age. With a credible timing of 1:51:30, he finished fourth. The mark was a youth record broken only by Monday’s effort. But there was an additional benefit. “It was my first senior tournament. Confidence ban gayi aur dar khul gaya,” says Beant.

All the while Beant continues to stay in touch with Sushil and his father Diwan. Sushil makes it a point to call him up after each race. “Sushil bhai keeps asking me what I am doing and whether I need any help,” says Beant. The same call came once more on Monday evening.

But Sushil’s key contribution has been in Beant setting his sights higher than he would have done. “It is a matter of honour for me that I know someone like Sushil bhai. When other athletes start competing their goals are very limited. But when you spend time with someone who has won a medal at the Olympic level, your own ambitions become higher,” says Beant, who is now targetting the Asian Youth Championships in 2015..