Born with an intellectual disability in a truck helper’s family, track scorcher Deepthi Jeevanji ran like a storm for 400m Paralympics bronze

On Tuesday night, as his daughter 20-year-old Deepthi Jeevanji won the bronze medal in the women’s 400m T20 classification final at the Stade de France in Paris Paralympics, Jeevanji Yadhagiri, a truck cleaner, had returned home in the village Kalleda in Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh. He had just finished a construction pipe delivery to another village in the district.

His daughter was born with an intellectual disability, the cognitive disease hampering a person’s communication as well as adaptive skills, but had made the Paralympics squad. The truck worker had been calling his wife Dhanalaxmi Jeevanji the whole day to ask about the hours remaining for Deepthi’s final.

Deepthi would set a scorching pace and barely lost steam on the home stretch, but had to contend with the Ukraine and Turkey runners finishing stronger.

“Even though it’s a big day for all of us, I could not afford to miss work. That’s my bread and butter and the whole day I was thinking about Deepthi winning a medal in Paris and would tell the driver Elfer about calling other friends and their families to celebrate Deepthi’s medal. She has always given us joy and this medal will also mean a lot to her,” said Jeevanji while speaking with The Indian Express over phone from Kalleda.

It was on September 27, 2003 that the couple were blessed with their first child at the village dispensary. With the child having a small head and unusual facial features with a cleft lip and a disfigured nose, the couple would be listening to the taunts of the villagers and relatives about their child’s appearance. The village having a population of more than 5,000 sees the residents relying on the cultivation of cotton as well as mango with the Jeevanji family owning half an acre of land.

While Yadhagiri worked as a labourer in the village farms to earn extra income, his father Ramachandria’s death meant that the family had to sell their share of land. “When Deepthi was born, the villagers and some of our relatives used derogatory terms for her and a lot of them insisted that we give her to an orphanage. As she grew up, she was a very active child in terms of physical work but would get emotional when the other children teased her,” recalls the mother. “Her only solace was to play with younger sister Amulya and to share a plate of rice mixed with jaggery with her. When my father-in-law died, there were days when we would eat only rice and those were tough times for the whole family, as both of us worked earning Rs 150-200 on some days and nothing on others.”

The family would enroll a young Deepthi at the Rural Development Foundation (RDF) School in the village in the late 2000’s and it was at the school that the PE teacher Biyani Venkateshwarlu spotted Deepthi running with her friends at the school ground. The coach would then urge the school’s owner Rammohan Rao to see Deepthi run on a track and support her training. The youngster would also compete against able bodied athletes at the school level and compete in 100m as well 200m races.

“During a normal run too, Deepthi’s running style, take-up, finishing run was almost perfect. The only problem we faced was that she could not concentrate on running in her lane. She had won the title in a state meet early in her career but was disqualified for running in a different lane. So we would make her run with other kids running in other lanes at slow speeds to help her understand lane running. Her strength was the explosive start and it helped her a lot, competing against able bodied runners,” said Biyani Venkateshwarlu through his wife as he is recovering from a brain stroke.

A title in a state meet at Khammam in 2019 would see Deepthi being spotted by SAI coach N Ramesh. The Dronacharya awardee coach, who was once the fitness trainer of the Indian hockey team in Sydney Olympics, remembered his ward’s first bus journey to Hyderabad. “Her parents were a bit hesitant at first but then Venkateshwarlu sir and I convinced them that it’s for Deepthi’s betterment that she gets proper training and makes a career of her own. At that time, they did not even have the bus fare for the Hyderabad trip. Since Deepthi understood things with good memory after multiple attempts, we used to first make her understand the synthetic track layout drawing on paper and make her run slow laps,” the coach had told this paper earlier.

The same year, national badminton coach Pullela Gopichand, who has been friends with Ramesh since long, saw Deepthi train and advised the coach to get Deepthi tested at the National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities at Secunderabad. After three days of tests, the youngster was assessed for competing in para competitions. She would compete in para nationals the same year and then won the 400m title in World Para Grand Prix in Morocco apart from a title in Para Oceania Pacific Games in Australia.

Gopichand too had shared with this paper earlier about the support for Deepthi through the GopichandMytrah foundation. Deepthi’s story is an example of what sports can do to a person, their family and the ecosystem. “An athlete like her needs care mentally as well as emotionally and financially at every step of her journey and we were able to do that. I remember we had to give money to the bus conductor for her ticket for sending and bringing her from her village and everybody played their part. When the category assessment for the World Para was to be done, coaches Ramesh and Suresh made sure that it was done in time and she was ready to compete at the International level,” Gopichand had said.

While Deepthi won the 400m T20 title in Hangzhou Para Asian Games last year with a new record of 56.69 seconds, she made a new world record of 55.07 seconds to win the gold in this year’s World Para Championships in Kobe, Japan in May.

The world record though was broken by Turkey’s Aysel Onder earlier this week in the heats with a timing of 54.96 seconds where Deepthi clocked 55.45 seconds in the other heat.

Coach Venkateshwarlu, when asked about his expectations from Deepthi in the Paralympics, tells through his wife, “Deepthi has taught each one of us patience and with her determination and will power, has come to this point in her career. I too have a 12-year-old mentally challenged daughter Sehsahasra and we have learnt to take care of her from the way we took care of Deepthi. Deepthi gave me a thumbs up for my better health earlier today and told me if she wins the Paralympics medal, the government will support my treatment too,” said the coach through his wife Rama.

At the Jeevanji home, the father makes a later call to his driver Elfer to tell the factory owner to give them an off to celebrate the medal. “Deepthi got the old house renovated, through her para Asian games cash award. But then whatever she achieves, it’s her reward. I rarely take a day off from work. But this Paralympic medal is the biggest moment in our life and work can wait for a day,” says the proud father.

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