Know Your Heroes | Anandan Gunasekaran - The Blade Runner

“It's always been athletics, my love. When I had joined the army they used to have a competition to test the potential of recruits. I came first in that and it started from there,” said a restless Anandan from the other side of the phone.

However, time took the one thing Anandan loved more than his life, and in the most ruthless manner. It was back in 2008 in the month of June, when during a routine sweep operation along the Line of Control that separated Jammu and Kashmir from the Pakistan region, Anandan happened to step on a landmine.

He was promptly taken to hospital in a helicopter but it was too late by then. The doctors couldn’t save his left leg and were forced to amputate it from below the knee. What followed was a string of operations in Delhi and Pune, and he also had to attend a rigorous rehabilitation program. It was a difficult few months for an athlete in heart and he refrained from revealing the incident to his family for as long as six months.

The tables had suddenly turned. Either fate had become kinder to him by then or as Anandan would like to think, he had won the battle against fate. He was the sole para-athlete from the Services and now he could focus solely on the one thing he loved – running. South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius was raging the arena back then with two amputated legs blended by blades, and it was a matter of time before Anandan caught notice of it.

But a sophisticated blade like that, which would help one to run with considerable speed and also keep a good balance by basically becoming an extension of the leg, would cost a lot. And Anandan needed the support of the Army to get his hands on it. It cost at around 4.5 lakhs and more than the price, it was about an adjustment to a whole new extension of his body.

Anandan proudly narrated his list of achievements. He struck his first medal in Tunisia International Meet in 2014 where he won gold medals in 200m and 4* 100m, and another silver in the 200m race. Then in 2015, he won another gold in Men’s 200m, and silver medal in 100m in the Sri Lanka Army Para Games that were held in Colombo. The same year, he won another gold medal in men’s 200m and a silver in men’s 100m in the World Military Games held in South Korea. His list of achievements extended to the next year as well, where, in Dubai’s Asia Oceania Athletics Championships, he clinched a gold medal in Men’s 400m and a silver medal in Men’s 200m.

Yes, keeping the blade stuck to the knee at the right place is a tricky thing and while it helps you to improve mobility, Anandan reveals it is also the painful process almost every time. “It gets heated up on and around the knee surface and it also gets cut sometimes when I train. Running with a blade isn’t that comfortable too. So, you control the pain, don’t show it on your face and start again.”

Anandan ranks second in the 400m race of the T64 category with a timing of 54.15 seconds, and is second to Italy’s Simone Manigrasso, who clocks an incredible 52.46 seconds in the same category. Being the only athlete in the Services to run as para-athlete, Anandan’s training regime is very similar to them. His training circuit is also similar to those of the able-bodied and Anandan proudly states that he has never backed down from finishing whatever his coach have asked of him.

While there was hardly any doubt about Anandan’s preparations that has started in full flow now, I still went ahead with the question as a formality. “My focus is on breaking the World record. I want to break it,” signed off Anandan.