Breaking barriers and national records: Youngsters from Uttara Kannada’s tribal communities excel in athletics

One of the key movers here is the Bridges of Sports Foundation, promoting athletes from tribal and marginalised communities. The Siddi community, considered descendants of Southeast Africans brought over as enslaved people by the Portuguese, has been the biggest beneficiary.

Nitish Chiniwar, founder of Bridges of Sports Foundation, said, “Siddi was scouted by us last year. We conduct a lot of village tournaments and races. We found him in one of these events, and he was good in natural ability. He lived with his grandmother in rural Uttara Kannada. It took us a few months to convince them to get him onboard to join our academy, where we have a hostel setup.”

We take care of them end-to-end, from arranging education (with nearby institutions), accommodation, nutrition and training gear. We have a digital timing device in which he broke the national 60m record for under-14, but of course, it was in practice. During the state athletics meet, he officially broke the record of 7.44 seconds with a sprint in 7.38 seconds.”

The foundation is working with several talented athletes at the national level. At the under-20 level is Nayana Kokare from another tribal community in the Uttara Kannada region. Kokare represented India and won a bronze medal at the Under 20 Athletics Championship in South Korea, with the fastest under-20 best Indian timing and fourth fastest overall in Asia. Another such athlete who managed to match the fastest timings in practice is Nimiksha Siddi, who has yet to get the chance to officially break the under-18 record owing to an untimely bout of dengue.

Chiniwar said, “In the 1980s, the government did a project with the Siddi community, and in two years, they represented India in the Asian and Commonwealth Games. In boxing and football as well. So they are quite inclined to sports. However, the project was not continued for various reasons. We started our project in 2016.”

Siddi’s coach Rizwan said, “We scouted 700 athletes last time and selected eight. This will happen again this year in eight rounds until February. We train the junior athletes on the track four times a week with one strength training session with bodyweight exercises.”

Siddi also responded to several queries by e-mail, “In my village, I saw my brothers run and watching them piqued my interest in running. I didn’t have many opportunities to watch many sports when I was growing up. However, since I started running, some senior athletes showed me sprint events, and I liked (Jamaican sprinter) Yohan Blake. Our teachers and coaches are very supportive. Sometimes, we miss tests and classes but our teacher reschedules these tests for us after our competition finishes,” said Sidd, whose goal is to represent India in the Youth Olympics for athletes aged 15 to 18.