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Paraclimbing champion scales new heights

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8 years 8 months ago #58193 by acetophenol
Fore note: The article is about 29 year old man named Manikandan Kumar from Banglore India winning gold at the Lead Paraclimbing World Cup,Austria. He suffers from Neurological disability from Polio disease which caught him at the age of 5. He has secured many other medals too.

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Afflicted by polio at five, Manikandan Kumar found his calling in climbing. The B'lore lad talks to Sunday Times about his medal haul.
Days after India faced fears of a polio recurrence last month, Manikandan Kumar shrugged off the disease while climbing his way to the top. The Bangalore athlete won gold at the Lead Paraclimbing World Cup at Imst, Austria, on June 28, and silver at the Paraclimbing Cup (Lead) in Chamonix, France last Saturday . With the second place in the Men's Neurological Disability category , the 29-year-old now has eight medals to his name. "I did really well in front of over 2,000 people, which was quite incredible," says the paraclimber, who was afflicted by polio in his right leg when he was five years old. Born to an underprivileged family, Mani wanted to become a mechanical engineer. In a twist of fate, he failed his Class 10 exams and his career plans came to a halt.

Around the same time, on a school trip to Ramanagar in 2002, a 16-year-old Mani, with a caliper fastened around his right leg, tried his hand at climbing and discovered that he had a flair for the sport. Although his polio-afflicted leg was an obvious deter rent, his spirit never faltered. "I never worried about my disability; I never thought I had a weak leg. Even in school, I participated in many sports," says the climber, who loves playing football in spare time.

While his father, a carpenter, wanted him to take up a conventional job, Mani insisted on making a career out of the sport. "I told him that one day I would change the way we live," Mani told TOI over email from France. In the absence of dedicated competitions for paraclimbers, he competed in events under the general category , securing a place in the top 10 among able bodied athletes.

His big break came in 2012, 10 years after he had taken to the sport. In the IFSC Para climbing World Championships (Men's Arthritis and Neurological P .D. category) held in Paris that year, Mani got a chance to represent India. And he made the most out of it by winning gold, thus becoming the first Indian climber to do so in a world championship. His family didn't even know about his victory or what it meant until a journalist showed up to interview them. Since that title, getting sponsorships has became easier and his family no longer asks him to consider another career. "It's been 14 years since I started climbing and my love for the sport is still the same as it was on day one of training," says Mani, whose Facebook profile is filled with selfies from climbing events and pictures of podium finishes.

Mani followed up the first championship with silver medals in events at Arco and London in 2013, and at Austria and London in 2014. With another silver at the next paraclimbing world championship in Spain in 2014, he proved he was not a one-hit wonder.

When the petite climber is not winning international events, he trains climbers at a Bangalore stadium. With a gold and silver added to his tally this year, scaling Mani's feat would be a challenge for any Indian in any category

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Paracl...cleshow/48130187.cms

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