Little over five seconds into the 1500m heats at the Paralympics last year, Ankur Dhama slowed down on the tracks, nearly halting and confounded. He was on his own. With the rest of the athletes pulling away tethered alongside their guides, Dhama waited patiently with an outstretched right arm to be led. His guide runner Vipin Kumar had taken a fall after being pushed by Turkey's Semih Deniz from behind.
Having lost out on vital seconds, Dhama, India's first blind athlete to participate in the Paralympics, could only manage to clock 4:37.61 as opposed to his personal best of 4:17. With only the group winners and three fastest losers qualifying for the final, a second-place finish wasn't enough for Dhama. "It was a crushing feeling," he says, "I knew my guide runner wasn't to be blamed so I buried the sea of pain within."
To arrive at a historic stage after years of arduous training and then to miss out without even being at fault cannot be an easy fate to contend with. The person who was to function as his eyes had lost his balance. Dhama is hurting, but isn't bitter. "Every experience is a lesson and I think I'll take heart from thinking that this too was one such," he adds. It's a learning that he'd possibly wish to carry into the next major international tournament, the World Para Athletics Championships, in July this year.
"Like a fish can't stay out of water, a blind athlete can't do without his guide," he says. Dhama is categorised as a T11 runner: he is completely blind and needs a guide runner, the most essential component of his training. The guide is carefully picked, his height, build, arm and leg length must match that of the para athlete. To have that human lighthouse suddenly knocked out of contention for a few frightening minutes in Rio is both frustration and adversity that Dhama and his guide must pull through.
July will once again give India's foremost visually-impaired para athlete and his guide a chance to restore balance and strengthen faith.
Dhama's chance to shine will not be possible without Vipin erasing the bad memory from Rio. Ankur's coach Satyapal Singh says that they have to, once again, "make four arms and four limbs work like two" - the most crucial technique while training a blind runner. "Arm and limb movements must be synchronised and coordinated in a manner that irrespective of the speeds we train them in, it stays intact," he adds.
Apart from keeping pace, the guide must ideally be a couple of seconds faster than the para athlete and offer verbal cues on turns, curbs, where other competitors are placed, keeping him in the loop constantly during the event. The guide though shouldn't cross the finish line before the para athlete. While the role of a guide runner can be both a gratifying and challenging one, apart from matching cadence he needs to adjust himself to the para athlete and allow him to feed off the confidence in his voice during a race.
Classified into categories to minimize the effect of impairments on the outcome of the competition, visually-challenged para athletes compete in one of the three sport classes - T11, T12, T13 - in track and jumps. While guides, linked together by a tether held between fingers or tied around their wrists, are compulsory for runners competing in T11 class, given their low visual acuity, it is optional for those in the T12 category who have a visual field of less than five degrees radius, which is higher than that of the former category. T13 athletes though don't need a guide since they have the highest visual acuity with a field of less than 20 degrees radius.
Dhama, 22, wasn't born into a dark world. His vision impaired progressively, before turning totally blind when he was six. Doctors were left baffled over the cause, ascribing it to a possible injury and despite close to a dozen surgeries, nothing changed. "Once I lost sight, I felt lonely and frustrated. I could no longer play with the other kids of my age," he says. Even once he grew older, the alienation continued, this time at social gatherings.
That is when sport began to matter. Dabbling in a number of sporting disciplines, including cricket, Dhama finally found his calling in distance running while at JPM School for the Blind in New Delhi in 2009, largely under the guidance of coach Satyapal. Currently pursuing his MA from St Stephen's, Ankur is supported by the GoSports Foundation, which also offers assistance to 17 other para athletes as part of its Para Champions programme - 11 of them qualified for last year's Paralympics.
A blind para athlete would require different guide runners at different times, depending on the nature of training. "An athlete warms up with one guide, does slow running with one, speed training with another and repetitions using someone else," Satyapal fills us in, "If we use the same guide runner, for 10 sessions a week, he would burn out." The main guide runner, in Ankur's case Vipin Kumar, with whom the para athlete participates in competitions, is used in special training sessions mainly.
The biggest challenge for blind athletes, though, isn't the training itself - It's the myriad hurdles that await them, both internal and extraneous, when they get out of bed each morning. "To brave all of that and find the will to train takes a lot of courage," adds Satyapal.
Apart from helping blind athletes train, guide runners also have separate practice sessions. "If I have a timing of 4:00 in mind for Dhama, for instance, I would need to train the guide runner to clock 3:50," Satyapal says.
Between those born blind and those who lose their sight later, says Dhama, slightly built with slender arms and limbs, mobility could often be a differentiating factor. "People who lose vision over time have to be mentally tough and analyze the things they have a memory of having seen - everything needs to be mapped in the brain," he adds. While recounting his Paralympic experience, Dhama, who won two bronze and a silver medal at the 2014 Asian Para Games, almost refers to 'sight' and 'experience' interchangeably, revealing the vivid imagery and understanding he managed to draw up of the setting, surroundings and his competitors. "I had never experienced an event of such magnitude before. It also offered me a peek into the level of preparation of other athletes and the importance of all-round training."
Vipin Pal, a co-guide runner, who often accompanies Dhama to social gatherings and other events says his role hasn't necessitated major adjustments in his life. "More than anything else, I enjoy his company. He's like my younger brother." Dhama, though, is quick to spell out the primary difference. "To find guide runners at all times is a challenge. They can do without us. But without them, we are helpless."
Fondly nicknamed 'hard disc' by Satyapal for his razor-sharp memory, Dhama is fascinated by numbers and can rattle off the timings of his competitors, apart from his own, with little trouble. "I think the Paralympics has helped spread awareness. Perceptions have changed and this will help upcoming athletes. Even in villages the message is reaching out that sport is for all," he adds.
The biggest danger, though, Satyapal notes, lies in the blind para athletes' mind. "We constantly keep filling them in about what's happening around them with detailed descriptions in a manner which allows them to picture everything. With Dhama, that's what we often do. The key lies in keeping their mind engaged so there's no room for self-deprecating thoughts to seep in," he says.
When he's not on the tracks, Dhama enjoys reading poetry and sometimes pens a few lines himself, a facet that he admits to bashfully. He picks a Mirza Azeem Beg couplet, as a particularly wry summation of his journey in the sport so far and his occasional attempts at poetry, "Girte hain shahsawar hi maidan-e-jung mein, woh tifl kya gire jo ghutno ke bal chale," (It's horsemen at a battlefield who experience a fall, what do toddlers crawling on their knees even know about falling).